I still find it hard to
believe that I have had puti fishes here in a foreign land whereas during the
two years stay in Bangalore in my own country, any tiny fish, say puti or
morola were untraceable. So you can imagine the overwhelming joy we felt upon
discovering the fish market that sells a big range of fishes from katla to shor
puti, from boyal to loita. It is almost synonymous with the feeling of hitting
a jackpot. Seriously!!
It might have been over
three years that I didn’t eat puti. Just as my eyes read the tag 'puti' written
on the shelve I could not suppress the mixed emotions of surprise and delight
at catching hold of something very extraordinary, unthinkable. Unexpected things
always invoke a great amount of pleasure and I was enraptured with pure joy.
The next day of our fish shopping, I made a call to my mother and enquired
about the possible ways to cook puti. This recipe that I extracted from my
mother upon implementation at home drew couple of rare veritable words of
appreciation from my worst critic, my husband.
Ingredients:
Cooking time: 30 minutes
ü 500 gm puti mach
ü 1 onion (chopped)
ü 1 tsp ginger paste
ü 1/2 tsp garlic paste
ü 1 tsp turmeric powder
ü 1 tsp cumin powder
ü 1 tsp red chilli powder
ü 1 tsp coriander powder
ü 5-6 green chillies
ü Salt to taste
ü 3-4 tbsp of sugar
ü 1 tsp concentrated tamarind extract
ü Mustard oil for cooking
For sauté:
ü 1/2 tsp black mustard seeds
ü 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
ü 2 dry red chilies
Method:
1) Toss the fishes in salt and turmeric
powder. Then deep fry them in smoking hot mustard oil. Take them off the
flame and keep aside.
2) Now into the same oil,
add the ingredients for sauté and allow them to sputter.
3) Then add onion and
caramelize.
4) Add ginger-garlic
paste, turmeric powder, red chili powder, cumin powder and coriander powder. Sauté
till spices are well incorporated.
5) Dilute the tamarind extract in 1/2 cup of
water and pour that into the curry being cooked on oven. Add water as per
your need for gravy.
6) Mix in green chilies,
salt and sugar. The gravy must taste sour, sweet and hot at the same
time. So combine the ingredients
accordingly. (If the sour taste
predominates over others, add more sugar to balance out the taste but take
care not to let the sweetness taking over.)
7) When the gravy comes
to a boil, slide in the fried fishes. Stir in gently and keep it on flame for
another 2 minutes. Turn the heat off.
8) Serve hot with
steaming rice.
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