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!

Diwali 2009 Feast - Melaka, Malaysia

My interest in reading magazines featuring gourmet recipes and watching Food Network shows presenting modern ideas and ingredients have made me adventurous and creative in the kitchen. I cherish traditional recipes and ingredients; I value the modern art of cooking :)

I proudly admit that much of my natural cooking prowess comes from my mom. She cooks without even stopping a moment to think how she creates wonderfully tantalizing dishes. I have learned and still am learning many useful cooking tips and ideas from her. She is also a wonderful baker although she tells me that I have exceeded her talent of baking cakes :) Still, no one can bake Nescafe cookies, coconut biscuits or peanut cookies like she does…which explains why many, many pieces do not actually get into the cookie jars during our regular Diwali cookie-baking sessions!

Including the Diwali that had just passed, I have missed four Diwalis being home in Malaysia with my parents. Thanks to a friend, I got to see the pictures of the various dishes my mom had prepared on Diwali day. It was so thoughtful of her to visit my parents on Diwali day and take pictures to send it to me so that I could drool over the Diwali food galore we had been missing! ;)

It’s my pleasure to publish these pictures of my mom’s cooking from her kitchen in Melaka, Malaysia here on my blogsite. Enjoy!

Nasi Biryani - Spiced Rice Pilaf

Ayam Masak Merah - Chicken in Chili Gravy

 

Mutton Perattal - Mutton Fry in Dry Gravy

Sambal Udang - Prawn Sambal (Dried Chili Gravy)

Chicken Kurma

Vegetable Achar (Pickle)

Mix-Veg Salad with Mayo Dressing

P/S: Thanks, Janet for the pics!

Seafood Fried Rice

Fried rice which translates to nasi goreng in the Malay language is indeed a famous hawker food in Malaysia – good for breakfast, lunch, dinner and even supper! For most, nasi goreng is a humble way to make use of the leftover rice from the previous meal. It is just too easy to make but still it can be made gourmet with the right ingredients.

I just cannot list the varieties of nasi goreng available in Malaysia because there are just too many! There’s this specialty named ‘nasi goreng kampung’ which contains dried anchovies (ikan bilis) and lots and lots of bird’s eye chilis (cili padi) and even ‘nasi goreng USA’ that comes with slices of sausages. Since it’s a simple and a complete-meal-on-a-plate, people mostly create their own varieties according to their taste and creativity :)

Featured here is my version of nasi goreng flavored with a selection of seafood: imitation crab meat (which is basically made of a mixture of crab meat and white fish meat), dried shrimp (pounded with garlic, ginger and chilis) and some fresh shrimp. I jazzed it up a little by serving the seafood fried rice with a sunny-side-up egg and a couple of sticks of fried imitation crab meat.

Shrimp-Flavored Rice Noodles

Of all the noodles varieties, my favorite is kway teow (flat rice noodles). The taste, texture and shape of these noodles are very much similar to pad thai (Thai cuisine). The most famous dish in Malaysia using this type of rice noodles is indeed char kway teow: the halal version of char kway teow is rice noodles fried with soy sauce, chili paste, prawns, cockles, eggs and bean sprouts and chives.

It’s actually a treat watching the dish being prepared by the hawker, in restaurants and even at pasar malams (night markets), using very well seasoned and huge kualis. However, while ordering our plate of char kway teow at these places, we make sure to request for the use of lesser oil as this dish tends to be more on the oilier side.

My own version of these noodles is flavored with fresh as well dried shrimps and eggs. I always like adding a handful of dried shrimps (I usually pound them together with garlic) because they add a very nice Malaysian flavor to some selected dishes. I also use extra chili paste (coz we like everything spicier!) which is why it is less darker than the regular char kway teow and a handful of shredded carrots at the end (a little out of the norm) to replace the crunchy effect of bean sprouts.

Scallops in Green Curry Sauce

The influence of Thai cuisine in Malaysian (Malay) cuisine is pretty strong particularly because Thailand is our northernmost neighbor. The uses of what are considered to be exotic ingredients in the U.S such as kaffir lime leaves (daun limau purut), galangal (lengkuas), lemongrass (daun serai) and pandanus leaves (daun pandan), are interchangeable between Thai and Malay cuisine.

Exotic-schmexotic….back home, when mom needed some kaffir lime leaves or lemongrass or even pandanus leaves for her cooking, all she had to do was get them from the backyard! Almost all my neighbors (mostly Malays) have these plants at their homes. Here, I paid a rather ‘exotic’ price for these imported ingredients – all frozen mind it!

Paying ridiculous price for an ingredient so easily found at home aside, it is always fun to cook using ingredients that I don’t regularly use. I followed the ingredients as listed in the green curry recipe I had bookmarked online. Green curry paste are sold for a much easier task and I have tried those but this time I wanted to make it from scratch especially because despite the long list of ingredients, it is rather simple curry dish actually.

We always use ‘light’ coconut milk for any recipes that call for it but the actual twist to my dish here is that I added a handful of roasted cashew nuts while making my green curry paste and the result was a creamier curry!


Scallops


Although a seafood lover, I never did like any of the molluscs species in my food when in Malaysia. Yes, I steered clear from dishes involving clams, mussels, oysters and scallops too. It could be because the only place where I have seen these being sold are at the wet markets and jeez, they are definitely not appealing to the sight in their natural form. In the markets here, all I see are these fresh looking, clean, white meat! :)


The first time I tried scallops here was when hubby took me to a seafood buffet. I tried one and I asked myself why I never tried it before! Since I love shrimps and prawns, it was easy to enjoy scallops as they share a kind of the same texture and taste. The cooking time for scallops are also the same as for prawns/shrimps – they cook fast and overcooking can make them rubbery.


Overall, adding scallops to my green curry sauce was indeed a good move. A scrumptious seafood fare!

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.