The Desi Akurri, and my almost-famous Frozen Margarita

This one is the simplest dish that you are likely to find on my blog.

The original credit for this must go to the January issue of the new Good Food (India) magazine. The issue had a big breakfast section, and it was a godsent! P and I are often at our wits’ end on what to do for breakfast. All manner of eggs have been eaten hundreds of times over already.


(On another day, with camera in kitchen, I will post my Turkish Eggs. A delight to cook and wonderful to eat.)


Back to the Akurri!


Let’s start with the assumption that when you normally do this miss mash (also called and a bhurji) of onions, tomatoes, green chill, coriander and so on, it comes out fine. And you are as bored of it, as you are of your boss’ whiskers. And you’re wondering what could be new about something so mundane; well wait till this goes into your mouth.


It’s the Ginger! Finely dice up a 1″ piece of ginger alongside your diced onion, tomato and green chilly. Throw in all of this into very hot oil in your pan. Add salt, red chilly powder and jeera powder. Just before the vegetables get scalded, pour in the fork-whipped eggs and give everything a good stir around without letting the eggs settle – you do know how to make a bhurji right? Garnish with the coriander! And be generous!


A friend who saw me doing this some weeks ago was amazed at the addition of red chilly and cumin to this dish; I can’t really recall when I started doing that – but when we’re doing desi eggs that seems natural now.


That fragrant ginger combines so perfectly with the other flavors of this dish. 


We like this dish simply because it’s the best you can do with chapatis left off from dinner. Or pao. Or the sinful white bread that so many of us have turned our backs on. Go all the way, scorch the pao in some butter and allow yourself that crisp luxury tomorrow morning at breakfast.


And don’t forget that extra sweet cup of chai!


The Margaritas? Wait for these! They are special! Better than anything that you can get in India’s nightclubs. The only time I had a better one was in O’Hare Airport. 15 years ago!


Just ping me when you have a good bottle of tequila, and you’ve organized some ‘triple sec’ (easily available in most premium stores now – from Angostura), some fresh squeezed lemon juice, salt and loads of ice. A heavy duty blender or kitchen-mixie and (optional) any soft fruit that you like most (strawberry, banana, kiwi, mango – you name it)!


Oh. Buy a few margarita glasses – as below – they’ll come in handy after you’ve fallen in love with these!

 

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.