Monsoon Fish Fry

Monsoon Fish Fry

Ingredients

• 5 large-sized (700 g) fresh Bombay Duck (bombil)

• 1 tsp turmeric powder

• juice of 1 lemon

• 3 green chillies

• 7-8 cloves garlic

• 1" ginger root

• cooking oil

• 3/4 cup semolina

• 1/2 cup rice flour

• 4 tbsp Malvani masala (or 3 tbsp Kashmiri red chilli powder + 1 tbsp garam masala powder)

• salt

Method

Take a chopping board and a sharp knife. Take a fish and chop off the tail, head and fins. Cut below the head in a diagonal manner and pull out the offal. Chop off the fins now.

With the blunt edge of the knife scrape off the shells by running it along its body from tail to head. Cut along its stomach and open the fish. Run the knife along this faint line running through its stomach. Remove the offal from inside and discard. Keep going deeper gradually so that you can open the fish completely. You can use the centre bone as a reference for cutting along. Flip to the other side. If it still does not look completely flat, you can go a little deeper. Do not cut too deep. After cleaning with water, pat dry with a kitchen napkin. Marinate with turmeric powder, salt and lemon juice. Turmeric powder has antiseptic and anti-bacterial properties. Lemon juice and turmeric powder helps get rid of the fish smell. Apply this mixture on the fish on both sides. Keep aside for 10 minutes. Bombay Duck has a lot of moisture content which must be removed from the fish for its better handling. Take a chopping board, or any large flat object and cover with a piece of cloth. Arrange marinated fish. Now, cover the fish with another piece of cloth. Take another chopping board/flat surface object. Place a heavy object/load on this board. Leave the fish for 30 minutes.

For second marination, grind chillies, ginger and garlic together. Grind into a thick and coarse paste with 1-2 tsp water. The coarse paste is ready.

Remove the board and cloth. Now, you got rid of the excess moisture and the fish has become firm.

Take a large plate and put the green masala paste on it. Apply this masala on all the fish. Fish is ready now. Refrigerate for 10 minutes before frying. (Do not keep in deep freezer). This will help in making fish firm and it becomes easy to handle while frying.

Now, make a dry batter for frying the fish. In a large bowl, put semolina, rice flour and Malvani masala. You can use 3 tbsp Kashmiri red chilli powder + 1 tbsp garam masala powder instead. Add salt to taste and mix well.

Take some quantity of batter in a plate and reserve the remaining. Remove fish from refrigerator and coat it with this batter. Apply the coating nicely.

Put a pan on heat with 2-3 tbsp cooking oil. As the oil becomes hot, reduce heat and put a batter-coated fish on the pan and fry on low-medium heat. For a good fish fry, it is important that you heat the oil and tawa perfectly and then fry fish on low-medium heat.

If oil temperature is too low, it will stick to the pan and while changing its side its skin may come off. Cook the underside for 3 minutes. Now, change sides. The underside should be well-cooked and look crisp fried. Spread oil all around the tawa. Cook for 3 more minutes from the other side. Remove from pan after 3 minutes. Add some more oil and fry remaining fish.

Crispy Monsoon Fish Fry is ready.