Calamari Masala

A quick fix side dish made from leftover calamari cooked in a fiery Bengali fried style.

Ingredients (Serves 2):

• Calamari- 200gm
• Plum tomato- 2 medium
• Garlic- 3 large cloves, chopped
• Cayenne powder- 1 tbsp
• Turmeric- 1 tsp
• Mustard Oil- 2 tbsp
• Salt- To taste

Preparation (30 mins):

Chop calamari to bite sized pieces.I prefer using the tentacles because they are easier to cook and don't get rubbery. In a bowl marinate the calamari with turmeric, cayenne and salt for fifteen minutes. Heat oil on high in frying pan. Add chopped garlic and stir.

Lower flame and toss in calamari. Cook on low till calamari starts becoming tender. Not if you cook on high or overcook or you end up with what I call vulcanized calamari.

Add in quartered plum tomato's, stir and cover. Cook on medium for 10 mins.

 
Serve hot as a fiery side dish.

Tips:

• You could easily replace calamari with octopus or squid.
• Frying calamari is the most sensitive part of the process. If you under cook you end up with raw fishy bits, and if you overcook slightly you have rubber calamari. That's why I prefer to cook on a low flame with constant tasting.
  

Tuna Maacher Jhaal (Spicy Tuna Curry).

This one's a derivative of a spicy but light fish curry from childhood. Though Bengali's love their spice and their fish, the nominal daily fish curry tends to be light on the stomach. our love for green chilli's, is more to do with the weather- something about eating green chilli's for lunch makes you sweat out the heat. And that we are a 'piccante' people. ;)

 Ingredients (Serves 2):

• Tuna Chunks- 200 gm
• Green chilli- 5 large, cut into large sections
• Onion- 1/2 large, chopped
• Ginger-Garlic Paste- 2 tsp
• Star Anise- 1
• Cloves- 8
• Cinnamon- 1/4 inch stick, broken
• Pepper- 1/2 tsp
• Turmeric- 1 tsp
• Mustard Oil- 3 tbsp
• Salt- To taste

 Preparation (20 mins):

Heat mustard oil in a pan and fry the fish over high flame. The trick to a good Bengali fish curry is frying the fish till it turns red. Normally, if I am making a bengali type fish curry at home, I cut and mix the fish with a little salt and turmeric before hand for at least an hour. In fact often, fresh fish brought from the market is coated thisaway before being kept in the freezer for the next day's cooking. Maybe the turmeric marinates it, or maybe just an extra precaution of keeping it clean.

Once the fish is reddish, brown, separate into a bowl, and fry the onions, spices and the ginger garlic paste in the same pan on high heat. As the onions start becoming translucent, add back the fish and cook for a minute or two on high. Add in turmeric, green chilli's, stir.

 


  
Add half a cup of water, cover and simmer for 10 mins. 




Though the chilli, makes the dish spicy, but overall once you get used to the heat you will find it very light on the stomach. Perfect for a rice and fish meal on a hot summer day.If you want to tone down the heat, serve with a wedge of lemon and a sweet mango pickle on the side.

Shutki Chingri with Eggplant (Sun Dried Prawns with Eggplants)

This recipe comes from Bangladesh. Specifically the southern coastal part. I feel Bengali cuisine today, as it is known, has diverged into three sub-families. There is the typical West Bengal cuisine, typified by aloo-posto, biuli/ arhar/ masur daal's, and other delicacies. I would class the center of gravity of this genre to the Rarh region, then there is the fusion cuisine of the Bengali's who migrated from East Bengal- the Bangal's, reminiscent of a lost homeland. Similar to West Bengal cuisine, over time this  is slowly morphing into the other Bengal (much like my family). And then there is Bangladeshi cuisine. Though having similarities in roots with the Bangal cuisine, it has over time developed into an independent form, with it's own nuances and characteristic tastes, spices and usage of vegetables and fish. When talking of Bengali food, like culture and society, people often gloss over the fact that food in Bangladesh is a category distinct from Bengali food in India.

This recipe is a recreation of a dried prawn side dish that my maid used to make back in Dhaka. Disclaimer-Best efforts aside, it's not as good as her version.


Ingredients (Serves 4):

• Shutki chingri (Sun dried prawns)- 250 gm
• Egglants- 2 (Chopped into small slivers)
• Onion- 1 large, chopped
• Garlic- 5 large cloves, chopped
• Ginger- 1/2 inch, chopped
• Red Chilli- 2
• Green chilli- 4, chopped
• Turmeric- 1 tsp
• Cayenne - tsp
• Salt- To taste (Add a little more than you normally do as the eggplant tends to bland down the dish and 
• Mustard Oil- 5 tbsp (I substituted with olive oil as I ran out)

Preparation (30 mins):

Heat 2 tbsp oil in a deep saucepan, throw in onions, garlic, ginger and the dried fish. Keep on high and continue turning over continuously till onions start becoming translucent.














In a separate container, mix chopped eggplants, turmeric, salt and cayene. Once the fish is near about done, sprinkle 2 tbsp oil and add the eggplants and red chilli's to the mix. Cook on high for 5 mins while constantly turning over.


















Throw in chopped green chilli's add remaining oil. Mix thoroughly and cover. Turn heat to low-medium. Cook for 15 mins or till you feel it's done.






Serve hot with rice.

Tips:

• This is a pretty strong flavoured dish. The eggplants in the mix not only add body to the dish but also tone down the strong fishy flavour. If you want to you could increase the proportion of eggplants in the dish.
• Another way to mask the strong fishy flavour is to use more onion and garlic. 

Mackerel Curry with Rice

Okay, this is not a traditional Bengali fish and rice combo, for neither is Mackerel a common fish in Bengal (quite a sizable chunk of people had a thing about sea fish), nor is this a recipe that you will find in gastronomic paeans. But the reason for including this one is because of the influence that the traditional 'bhat and macher jhol' recipes had on this dish.

It's easy to cook- right from preparation to serving takes about an hour and is light on the stomach. Maybe the best description for this would be 'comfort food for the restless Bengali soul far from home.' For those of you who are curious but tentative about trying out complex fish curries, this one may be the right one to start off with.

Ingredients (Serves 2):

• Mackerel-2 (Cleaned and cut into head, body and tail)~ About 300 gm each
• Tomato-1 large
• Onion- 1 large (finely sliced)
• Ginger- 1 inch stick (chopped finely)
• Garlic - 2 large cloves
• Turmeric- 2 tsp
• Chilli powder -1 tsp
• Chilli flakes - 1/2 tsp (just for the smell, trust me it does not make it hot).
• Salt- To taste
• Mustard oil to cook - 4 tbsp
• Bay leaf- 2 small

Preparation:

Clean fish in fresh water, drain, dress with turmeric, salt and leave aside for 15 mins. Chop onions, ginger, garlic. Quarter tomato and cut into halves. Heat 3 tbsp oil in pan till smoking. Fry fish till lightly browned. Remove from flame.

Pour remaining oil in pan. Add onions, garlic, ginger to oil- stir till soft. Add tomato pieces, bay leaf, chili flakes, chili powder. Stir on low flame. Add fish to the mix. Add a little water. Simmer for 20 mins and your fish curry is down.

Serve hot with rice for lunch.


Estimated cost:

• Fish~ OMR 1
• Tomato+ Garlic+ Ginger+ Onion~OMR 0.100
• Oil+ Spices~ OMR 0.200
• Total cost~OMR 1.3 or USD 3.5 for two people

Tips:

• If you have the time and inclination, I would recommend pairing this off with a light 'aloo posto'.

Bhapa Chingri (Steamed Prawns in Banana Leaves)

Prawns, rather shrimp, steamed in a mustard-chili sauce was one of the favourite holiday dishes when we were growing up. Normally, what Mom would do is seal the shrimp with the spices into a small container and put it into the bhater hari (rice-pot) once the rice was half done. The shrimp would get cooked in it's own juices on slow heat over an hour or so. And when at lunch it would be opened, you would have fragrant steam rising mixed with the pungent mustardy, chilli smell. Ahhhh.....Heaven.


Miss those rainy afternoon lunches when we would sit down for long slow lunches. Anyway, here's my personal adaptation. It's extremely simple to make, relies on the natural flavours of the spices to make the dish stand out and is great if you have a cold. Let me know if you try it.

Ingredients (Serves -2, Approximate cooking time-1 hr)

• Prawns (shelled and deveined) - 250 gm
• Mustard seeds- 4 tbsp (more if you are adventurous)
• Green chillies- 8
• Mustard Oil- 4 tbsp
• Grated coconut (optional)- 3-4 tbsp
• Salt to taste
• Banana leaves- If you can get them for wrapping the prawns-2 large

Preparation:


Soak the mustard seeds in hot water for 2 hrs. Grind half of the chillies to a paste. Add salt and the mustard seeds. Grind to a smooth paste.

Mix the paste into the prawns and set aside for 15 mins. Now wrap the prawns in the banana leaves along with the mustard paste. Sprinkle on a little bit of salt, 2 tbsp mustard oil, and two of the remaining green chillies chopped into small pieces. Use the second leaf to make a waterproof parcel as shown below. If you want, you could seal in even this pack in a length of aluminum foil so that you have no messy drips in the oven.

Bake in the oven at 200 C for 30 mins.

Remove the foil and unwrap the banana leaves. Add remaining chopped chillies and mustard oil. Serve hot with rice.

Tips:

• Picked this one up from my cousin. When grinding the mustard seeds, it is recommended that you add a pinch of salt as otherwise the paste takes on a bitter taste.
• If you want, you could add a pinch of turmeric and red chili powder with the marinade in the beginning. Lends colour and masks a bit of the fishy smell.
  

Hilsa baked with mustard

The perennial Bengali fishà Hilsa is back again. Strange that even in Muscat, you manage to find Hilsa. As my fishmonger Nizam put it, “Bhai, absolutely fresh from the Padma. Only two months on ice.” But then what else could a Bengali guy do when faced with Hilsa.

To top it all, there’s this new chappie in office, who had been eating my ear’s out with stories of home cooking, lau-chingri, posto bata, sukto, einchorer dalna, note shak bhaja. So there I was standing with a kilo of tucked under my arm and no idea of what to cook.

In the end I decided on “Illish Paturi”. Back at home, the hilsa would have been swathed in layers of fresh banana leaf and left to cook in the embers of a dying wood or coal fire, but Muscat being as removed from Calcutta as fish from the desert, what follows is my modified version.

Ingredients (Serves 1):

• Hilsa- 250 gm
• Mustard seeds- 3 tbsp
• Green Chillies- 6 large
• Mustard Oil- 2 tbsp (You can cut it down for a diet h ilsa bake, but it does leave something lacking).
• Salt to taste

Preparation (Processing 10 mins+ Baking Time 25 mins~Total Time 40 mins)

Soak mustard seeds in warm water for half an hour. Cle

an fish in fresh water. Grind mustard seeds, 4 green chillies to fine paste. Add mustard oil and salt to the paste. Spread this paste evenly on the fish. Slit and place the remaining green chillies on top of the fish. Wrap the fish in double layers of aluminum foil. Seal the packet from the edges, as you see in the pic below, so that steam does not escape. Do not wrap the fish too tightly as otherwise the pack may burst in the oven.

Set oven to 250 C and bake for 25 mins. If you have time on your hands, I would recommend cooking at 150 C for 40 mins. The longer time you can give it low temperatures, the better do the flavours mingle.

Serve hot with rice.

Tips:

• Though we are using a lot of mustard and green c hillies, the baking process tempers down the spices. So if you want to have it really spicy, I would recommend serving green chillies on the side for accompaniment.