Fish Curry and Spicy Yellow Cabbage

If anyone is actually on this blog looking for recipe advice TODAY IS YOUR DAY: both the recipes in this post were genuinely easy and super good.

I decided to try and imitate 2 dishes that are sometimes a part of the crèche lunches. I finished my time volunteering there last week, and I already miss it, and the food--the women cooked delicious, simple, home-cooked food, every day. Plus, eating with your hands is so much better than eating with a spoon, once you’ve gotten the hang of it. You’ll never realize how much you taste the cutlery until you eat without it.

I made these recipes on Sunday, which means market day, which means FISH

a man and his fishes

Both recipes came out amazingly, although my photos of them came out terribly, so you will have to try them yourself to see how beautiful and delicious they are. 

The fish recipe is very subtle and simple--you make a rich base of spices (the masala) and tomato/onions, cooked down to the point where they barely resemble veggies, then you make it creamy with coconut milk. It's based off of this recipe, with a few minor adaptation, slightly changing the ratios of things, as well as saving us all from the terrible task of grating onions. On the plus side, the original recipe has very good photos of the steps. The cabbage dish I improvised, based on a side dish I've often had at the creche and as part of thali meals. Through some intrepid Googling of phrases like “indian cabbage mustard seeds food thing” I've discerned that it might be called Cabbage Thoran, but that also might be something else entirely. 

Okay prepare yourselves for the worst photo you ever will see:

I will never be a famous food blogger. Tragic, really.

Okay, so first the fish curry: 

FISH CURRY

Ingredients:

•           enough fish filet for 4 people. Try to get a firm white fish. Cut the filets into cubes (mine turned out more like thin strips because the fish man somehow left a million bone-bits in and I had to basically destroy the fish for half an hour getting the bones out. I am not cut out for the fisherman life, probably)
•           1 tablespoon vegetable oil
•           2 onions, cut very finely
•           thumb sized piece of ginger, minced
•           3 cloves garlic, minced
•           3 diced tomatoes
•           1 tsp garam masala
•           1 tsp chili powder (hot)
•           1 tsp salt
•           lots of black pepper
•           1 cup coconut milk or slightly more to taste
•           ¼ cup water
•           1-2 fresh chilly peppers, slit. (if you want SPICE)
•           ¼ cup green onions, chopped

 What you do:

1. Wash and dry fish pieces
2. Heat oil in pan, add onions, garlic, ginger. Cook on LOW heat for a LONG time: at least 5 minutes, until you can’t tell the things apart from each other and it smells amazing. Add a leeeetle bit of water if you have to, so it doesn't burn.
3. Add tomatoes and garam masala. Keep heat low, and mash the tomatoes with a fork. Cook until it’s all a kind of paste. You will know this when you see it.
4. Add chili powder, salt and pepper. Stir.
5. Pour in liquids, add the slit chilies if you're using them. Add more black pepper if you want. Bring this to a boil, and add the fish. PAY ATTENTION because fish cooks fast. In about 4 minutes or less, when the fish is white/cooked, remove from heat, it is done. Sprinkle green onions on top. 

 SERVE on rice and with this lovely cabbage thing as a side dish:

LOVELY CABBAGE THING (literally takes 5 minutes)

Ingredients:

• 1 cabbage
• 1-2 tablespoons whole mustard seeds
• 1 tablespoon oil/butter/ghee/whatever
• 2 tablespoons garlic ginger paste OR 1 clove garlic, 1 inch of ginger, chopped finely
• cumin
• turmeric
• chilly powder
• salt
• water.
• fresh cilantro

What you do:

1. Remove outer layer of cabbage, core it...you know: cabbage things.  Chop it into thin strips.
2. In a deep-ish pan or a wok, heat oil, put mustard seeds in and wait for them to pop
3. Add garlic/ginger/the rest of the spices. Stir for a minute
4. Add cabbage and salt. Stir until all cabbage is coated in spice/oil mixture.
5. Add about a quarter cup of water, cover, and leave on medium heat, stirring occasionally and adding more water if needed—basically you are steaming the cabbage now. It’s done when the cabbage is at your preferred Cabbage Tenderness Level.
6. Garnish with a whole lot of chopped fresh cilantro. 

 Serve with the curry of fishes!

TWO OCEANS

This past week we voyaged to Mandapam, a teeensy town near Rameshwarem, a bigger town. Both are on that little peninsula that sticks out of India towards Sri Lanka, meaning in ten minutes you can walk from ONE OCEAN TO ANOTHER.

Ok, technically it's the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, which is, technically, part of the Indian Ocean. So technically it's not two oceans.

but anyway FISH EVERYWHERE

Mandapam is a tiny little fishing town, with no hotels. We stayed in an amazing homestay in a 150 year old mansion called BISON House (British India Steamship Oriental Navigation House?  ??). It looks insane:

and apparently it's made of CORAL?? which is horrible and weird and cool.

...and it acts insane. Or the grounds do. There are what look like bald eagles (actually Brahminy Kites, or what the caretaker/manager of the house called Vishnu Eagles) swooping all over the place. There is at least one goat every way you look. There are pieces of coral and beautiful shells sticking out of the sandy ground. Oh and peacocks...everywhere. Which sound majestic and wonderful, and totally is, but what peacocks literally sound like, especially at night when you're trying to sleep, is cats being strangled. For the most beautiful bird, they make awful sounds. Like a drunk cat trying to imitate a rooster but then being stepped on halfway through.

And oh yeah, fresh fish.

The first night we stayed there we had a vegetable curry, but we were told that the next night there would be freshly caught fish, because the boats were coming back in.

They came:

this boat's name is Kevin

And we ATE

AND IT WAS AMAZING

The couple who run the house live downstairs, and Vasantha, the wife, cooks. And she is amazing (and she knows it. She was great.) This was prawns curry (and the prawns were incredibley soft and tender) with BARACUDA! I had definitely never tried baracuda before. A+. Also homemade chapatti and a cabbage/onion/peppercorn side-dish that I've had many times now but this was one of the best.

For breakfast on the first day we got homemade dosai and chutneys, also some of the absolute best I've had. For breakfast on the second morning she made Upma:

it looks like mush but really it is so much more

Upma is a weird food because it can't decide whether it wants to be sweet or savory and that is okay. The base is a kind of dry porridge, typically of Semolina or dry rice, mixed with green chilies, peanuts, cumin, ginger and onions--like a curry, except the proportion of grain to these things is big, so you end up with a mild but savory mixture. BUT THEN it is served with sugar, grated coconut, and sliced banana. The banana adds a more moist texture, and for some reason this strange mixture of foods is actually delicious.

TREASURE

bought some flowers for my hair in Rameshwarem.
I couldn't tell if this woman was amused or annoyed by how tall I am. 

this was my favourite goat