I was brought up in a very vegetarian Indian household and never ended up eating or cooking non-vegetarian food until I met my husband. My husband and I bonded over cooking. He is a big foodie and at the same time, is also a great cook. It is so much fun cooking with him. We experiment a lot, especially with Indian dishes. I am planning to pen up some of our favorite recipes and leave them here.
Besides my husband, my sister-in-law (my husband’s elder sister) is also an amazing cook. I have learnt a lot of cool traditional recipes from her over past few years. In this post I am going to share one of her recipes for making spicy Rohu fish curry.
Rohu fish curry or the Indian fish curry is a traditional, popular and age-old Bengali style fish curry. This curry is spicy and tastes well with steamed rice.
Ingredients:
- Rohu fish – 1 Kg (makes four servings)
- Mustard seeds – 4 tablespoon
- Red chilies – 4
- Medium sized garlic cloves – 8
- Cumin (whole) – 1 tablespoon
- Black pepper (whole) – 10
- Tumeric – 2 tablespoon
- White flour – 1 tablespoon
- Bay leaves – 2
- Fenugreek seeds – 1/2 teaspoon
- Coriander leaves – 1 tablespoon
- Salt as required
- Oil
Recipe:
Wash and prepare the fish for the curry.
1. Make sure the fish is scaled and cut into small pieces. If possible, get it done at the store while buying.
2. Wash the fish pieces under tap water and keep them aside.
3. Mix 1 tablespoon of salt, 1 tablespoon of tumeric and 1 table spoon of white flour and massage it over all the fish pieces.
4. Leave them for 10 mins and wash them again under tap water while massaging the pieces. Pat dry.
5. Now repeat step 3 again and leave the spice infused fish pieces for 10 mins.
Preparing the curry mix
1. Use a spice or a nut grinder to grind mustard seeds, red chilies, garlic cloves, cumin, and black pepper into a powder. Add water and make a paste.
Making the curry
1. Heat up oil in a deep pan. Add the fish pieces, one-by-one into the pan. Fry them carefully on high to medium flame. Flip them to cook the other sides. Make sure both the sides are cooked nicely and evenly. Once cooked, remove the fried fish pieces from the pan and drain any excess oil using kitchen towel.
2. To the same pan, add bay leaves, fenugreek seeds, salt, turmeric and the curry mix you made earlier along with some water.
3. Cover the pan with a lid and let it cook on medium flame for 10 mins. Stir occasionally and ensure that the spices or the fish doesn’t stick to the pan. If it does, add water.
4. When the oil starts to separate from the spicy mix, add 3 cups of water and let the water come to a boil. Cover the pan to avoid any splatter.
5. Finally, add the fried fish and let it cook with the gravy for about 8 mins on low flame.
6. Adjust the salt if required and garnish with copped green coriander.
7. Serve hot with steamed rice.
Tips for steamed rice:
While making rice, in the boiling water, mix rice with spices such as black cardamom, green cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, cumin and salt. It gives an amazing aroma and flavor to otherwise simple white rice.
PS. I tried this recipe for a surprise dinner for my husband as this is one of his most favorite dishes. He loved it. Thanks didi. You are the best!
Musings 
This will be tried today in the Maldives 🙂
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