Indian Fish Gravy

Love, love, fish! I may not be too thrilled cutting and cleaning a whole fish but once I bring fish home from the market, all fresh and cleaned, I enjoy preparing fish dishes.

Here is a typical Indian fish curry using fresh, whole mackerels – the type of fish with not so many bones and with clean-tasting, white meat.

A mild combination of spice blend (cumin, fenugreek, caraway with onion, ginger and garlic) with fresh tomatoes, create a wonderfully thick gravy for the fish *pieces to swim in and soak to perfection!

*(Prior to adding it into the gravy, the fish is cut into pieces, marinated with turmeric and salt and fried first to prevent them from breaking up in the gravy and also to prevent the dish to smell too fishy, if at all)

And there’s something I always add to fish gravy, blanched whole okras...just like the way my mom does it!

With rice and a side of greens (as seen in pic), awesome...meeow!

Panko-crusted Baked Salmon Steak

When I was back in Malaysia earlier this year, I bought a couple of fillets of wild Norwegian salmon at Jaya Jusco (Melaka) and was pleased with the quality of the fish. It was a little bit pricey but I liked the fact that it was wild and not farm raised.

I have the same aversion to farm-raised fish just like poultry treated with antibiotics. With a toddler at home, I am especially more concern about such things these days. Luckily for us, all poultry and the dairy products sold at the grocery stores where we shop here in CA are sans plumping and antibiotics free.

However, there are aplenty of farm-raised seafood still available at these places: tilapia, salmon and even shrimps. Recently I have been reading a lot about how the level of PCBs (a toxic substance) is high in farm-raised salmon and how it can adversely affect our health. So it’s worth paying a couple of bucks extra to get wild caught fish. I am certain that I pay extra not just for safety but also for taste. I bought this packaged salmon from the grocery store the yesterday.

Frozen but wild caught and all natural so it was a good catch :) Marinated the salmon steaks in some ginger+garlic infused soy, mushroom and pepper sauce and then coated them with panko breadcrumbs and baked them to perfection in the oven!I just love the fact that I didn’t have to use even a single drop of oil in making this dish; just the natural and valuable oil of the salmon in this healthful, tasty dish.

The panko, Japanese breadcrumbs, stays crunchy even after the baking process and that’s why I prefer using this to coat my salmon steaks. Served on a bed of simple nasi goreng and some salad greens, a scrumptious lunch for sure!

Fish Puttu: Shredded Fish Fry

Well, I really don’t know how else I could describe the Tamil/Malayalam word “puttu”. The end product is as shown in the picture here and the meat of the fish does seem like it has been shredded, so I guess it is acceptable here :)

My memory is rather faint here but I think the first time I ate this was when I was a little girl and the dish was prepared by my uncle in Melaka. I cannot recall having this dish prepared at home by my mom as well. However, in a more recent period, I remember having this dish at an Indian restaurant in Brickfields, Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur’s Little India. Most commonly, milk shark is the fish used in the dish. I guess the reason they call this particular species of shark the milk shark because in India, it is believed that eating its meat will improve the milk production of a nursing mother.

I have tried making this recipe with some shark fillets and the result was pretty amazing. I must say though that the dish tastes kind of the same even when I used different varieties of fish fillets such as tilapia, orange roughy or even dover sole.

I used ½ pound of tilapia fillets (around three medium-sized fillets) and fried them till they flake up really well in a sautéed combination of cumin seeds, onions, green chilies, finely chopped curry leaves. Then I added some grated coconut and chopped cilantro to add more pizzazz to the dish towards the end.

It’s so quick and simple to prepare this dish and the best thing about it is that it’s versatile. You can have it as a side dish for your lunch (with rice and vegetables) or roll it up in tortillas for a light and satisfying dinner, like I did!

Dover Sole Fillets in Spicy Tomato Gravy

My mom makes delicious crab curry especially when the good crabs are in season. The last time she was in US, she made for us that specialty and satisfied our craving for some crab! I love crab meat but am not at all interested in the idea of buying fresh crabs and cooking them. While crabmeat is easily found US, it is usually in a form that is usually suitable for salads or sandwiches.

The first time hubby and I tried Dover Sole fillets, we realized how it tasted like crabmeat. The fillets are sweet, soft and delicate tasting just like crabmeat. Here, the fillets are cooked in a thick and spicy gravy consisting of tomatoes, onions, ginger, garlic and chili powder. Almost like having mom's crab curry - a perfect, seafood lunch.