That Wicked Goan Fish Curry! Perfected!

So here’s that Goan Fish Curry I promised earlier. I made this last Sunday morning and judging by the reaction of a few kind friends, it’s come out perfectly wicked.


Credit due as usual to the original place I had found this many months ago. Goanfoodrecipes seems a good place to try some other stuff as well. As is usual with many online recipes though, I had to make mid-course corrections and alterations; but finally the recipe below has become mine! And I made sure this time that I used a camera in the kitchen through the dish.


Here’s the final output to get the taste buds and cooking instincts warmed up!

In getting this dish started, I find it easiest to assemble the ingredients in one place. That looks nice as well ;-). What you’ll need
1 kg fish fillets cut into 2″ bite size chunks – nicely cleaned; I used rawas the other day and it was fine. Just be careful not to use a fish that disintegrates too quickly.
Juice of a lemon
One raw mango

2 inch piece of tamarind – soak into a cup of hot water (you macerate and discard the tamarind pulp and have the sour water/juice with you)

2-3 tsp of white vinegar

2 green chillies – for the final garnish (as in photo above)

For the curry – all this to be ground
1/2 a coconut – grated
1 inch piece of ginger – peeled & diced
6 cloves garlic – peeled & diced
8 dry kashmiri red chilles – broken up roughly
8-10 peppercorns – break them under the flat side of your large knife
1tsp coriander seeds (failing that use powder)
1 tsp methi seeds
1/2 tsp haldi or turmeric
1/2 tsp jeera seeds or cumin powder
2 green chilles – diced
1 tsp salt – and add more into the gravy as you need


Let the fish stay in a container at room temp please; squeeze all the lemon juice into the fish and move it around to blend it with the fish.
Slice up the raw mango into bite sizes
And keep the tamarind juice prepared and ready.


The rest of the ingredients, just nicely lined up on a plate first! 


Then simply shove all the stuff into a blender, add half a cup of water and start zapping it. I needed to do quite a bit of zapping to really pulp out the coconut. Feel free to add more water and keep moving the material from the sides of the mixer bowl to the centre every few zaps. The result is – voila! Nice color right? And already – with the ingredients raw, the smell is getting to the rest of the family! N walked in and asked what was cooking!


All the contents of your blender then go into your cook pot or kadai (take your pick). Do NOT add oil. There is no mention of oil in my ingredients above – and for good reason. The coconut is so full of oil – it may as well be a car engine!


Basically let this mixture cook out well such that the oil separates. And add little bits of water so that the stuff does not dry out. And do stir now and then. Of course – you can add more water or less, depending on the final consistency you want. Rice or appams?


In about 10 minutes this should be done. Looks gorgeous and smells heavenly once the oil separates (and actually fragrance is how I gauge something is cooked up). This is what you should see now!

Now into this goes (first) the vinegar and the tamarind water and the cut pieces of mango, and then after 5 minutes all your fish pieces (that extra time allows the mango to become tender nicely). The vinegar and tamarind and mango are crucial – because otherwise the chillies in this dish can set up an intestinal fire rapidly. In fact, overall, I can’t imagine this dish being a hit with younger kids. If the mango here looks too yellow and done to you, good observation! I used one that was raw, but not the small, hard, dark green one that you usually find in the veg shop. Payal picked this one off a tree at the Taj Holiday Village last week.


The fish should be turning white in the time it takes to read a couple of paras, and that means it’s cooked out and blended with the curry. Just drop in a couple of the green chillies, and turn off the heat. Let it sit covered for 30 minutes and the flavors really emerge beautifully.


For me this one is best done with plain white rice, or goan rice if you can get your hands on it. At Kavita’s last Sunday I tried this with her excellent appams, and truly it left nothing to complain about. Those pieces of mango in the dish? Yes – they are meant to be eaten! Try one out!


Oh – important for heat management – a cold mug of beer!


Tips & Variations
I’m quite happy with this curry as it is – but just some quick tips
– to add a layer of depth and more texture – you can fry some diced onions before you add the blended masalas to the cookpot. Use maybe a tbsp of oil for the onions then
– you can finish this dish with coconut milk, instead of water. Add the milk after you’ve cooked the masala for a bit. So if you want it nicely rich & creamy and want to impress a potential mom in law, that is a way to go. Adds a few calories of course.
– next time, I am going to try and dry roast the masalas before I add them to the blender. I have a feeling that could be a definite +. Worth a shot. If you do try that, let me know whether it worked out well.


Enjoy this. Remember – easy dish to make! But the assembling of ingredients takes that extra 10 minutes. And cost – well under 500 bucks.

Some good eating in Goa.

Much of the previous weeks leisure time was spent in rather sunny Goa! As usual, Payal, the kids and I drove our (sometimes less that trustworthy) Skoda Laura. Just as a road trip tip for those of you with this car, we just let the rear seats down, put a couple of thin mattresses and pillows – and the kids pretty much sleep for 6 of the 8 hours it takes to North Goa. Naihan can sleep all the way to South too!


This was our first time in North Goa, and ably helped by Shaista’s deep knowledge of these parts, we were seriously well fed – despite the fact that many of the establishments on our list were shut for the month of May (Bomras,Thalassa – we will be back to check you out!).


The clear winner of the meal stakes was at a hole in the wall, riverside place called Amigo’s. Don’t ask me why ‘Amigo’s’ and not something more seafood contextual. The most heavenly butter garlic crab I have had in ages and a crusty, slightly burnt local fish – served whole. Some goan rice. Chilled beer. Shade and the riverside! I’m pretty sure you can’t find this place!


Just down the road from the Taj hotels is a terrific Italian place called Tuscany Gardens (http://tuscanygardens.in/). 8 adults and 2 kids, ate and drank to their fill in a lovely quiet setting – all under 6K. The food was tremendous enough to tell you that perhaps the only thing to avoid was the Quattro Formaggi (four cheese) pizza. Too cheesy for us.


And yes, I had never been to Souza Lobo before! You need to get here early to get a beach table that you can squat on for the next few hours, and be brave enough to go to Calangute. All of North Goa actually (aside from Calangute) seems too full of too many people. Souza’s sausage rice was what hit the spot for me. I have been transporting sausages from goa for a while now, and manage to rustle up some hybrid stuff (fried with onions, chillies, and then baked with eggs; a onion & rice prep) that I will post soon – once I take some snaps when I cook up next.


Also – just in case your increment was tiny this year – please do buy your booze in Goa before you fly out. I was shocked by the range, the display and the prices of spirits in Goa. I picked up at these very nice, fancy stores on the Aguada road – Newton’s and Delfino’s. Better than any large store in Bombay clearly. 


Actually, the range of food and groceries in these stores make it easy for one to rent a bungalow and do some good cooking a couple to times a day. Just saying you know – for those inclined to a cooking holiday!


So in sum. Another great road trip to a place I almost call home. And a fresh look at my Goa Fish curry and the sausage concoctions are coming up next.


The unmemorable parts of this trip – our stay at the Taj Holiday Village. The hotel has clearly seen better days, it’s a clear cash cow, and you should go to this place only if you are part of a corporate conference or a family group that is hogging 30-40 rooms. Pretty much these groups’ sense of entitlement and the hotel staff’s apathy make for a unremarkable time. And oh, they did not have Ten Sports – I ended up missing the Chelsea-Bayern Munich final! 


Easily the only unremarkable food was at a place called Pan Asian Bowl – on Miramar Beach road – just down to the right from Mum’s kitchen (and the mirchi/toi office). The whole essence of oriental food defiled by overspicing everything. And the staff was largely clueless! 8 of us ended up ordering enough for 14!