Fish curry with fresh coconut milk

Hello again. Today's recipe is the fish curry with coconut milk. This is yet another post which was in the drafts. Just like any other Malayali, I am a big fan of fish curries and fry. I love both the ones with coconut milk as well as the ones without. The ones without coconut milk usually tend to me more spicy.

This is the fish curry I learnt from my mom-in-law and grandmother-in-law. When you have 2 mom in laws it can get a bit funny and weird sometimes in the kitchen :D what with both giving different instructions :P .... I used to be a bit worried as to who exactly to follow, not wanting to upset either of them. But I've learnt to balance them now :) My husband's grandmother has been quite an active person MashaAllah. But recently she has not been feeling that well... :(

This is a pretty simple and easy fish curry in which you cut and put all ingredients in a pot (I use earthen pot for making fish curry mostly). Let it all cook in the fresh coconut milk... after 10-15 minutes you'd get a nice slightly thick gravy. Add in the cleaned and cut pieces of fish. Fish cooks pretty fast. Hardly 5-6 minutes. Your fish curry is ready. And boy, does it taste good!
I usually do not do any tempering of curry leaves in the end. The curry leaves are added with all the ingredients.

But in this specific pic I did do a final tempering in coconut oil, small onions and curry leaves...

Fish curry is all about the different kinds of items you use to give the curry its tangy-ness. My mom in law uses both ripe and raw tamarind, Kudampuli (Gambooge), Irumban puli (Bilimbi) and Raw mango. Each of these give a different tangy taste and all taste excellent. What I use mostly here in Dubai is ripe tamarind or kudampuli. And tomatoes too add their own tangy taste. But the tomatoes we get in kerala are a lot more tangy than the ones we get here. So when my mom-in-law uses 1 small tomato there, I use 2 here.

I love this curry a lot not only because its so yummy, but also coz its extremely easy to make. Just throw everything in and let it cook :)

Now here's what you'll need to make this curry:

• Shallots - a hanful chppoed (I like adding a lot of this :))
• Tomatoes - 1 big or 2 medium (Like I explained above it depends on your tomato. Add whatever u feel necessary)
• 1  green chilly
• 1/2 tbsp turmeric powder
• 3/4 tbsp chilly powder
• Salt to taste
• 4 slices of kudampuli/ half a palm-full of ripe tamarind (Check taste.. do not over do on these if you do not like a lot of tangy taste)
• 2 cups coconut milk (made by grinding fresh coconut and water)
• Curry leaves a handful
• Fish of your choice (cleaned and cut into pieces)

How to make:

• Take a deep bottomed pan add in the shallots, tomatoes, curry leaves, the kudampuli/ripe tamarind, turmeric powder, chilliy powder, salt, coconut milk and also an extra of 2 cups of water.
• Let this mixture come to boil and then reduce flame and cook for 10-15 minutes until u can see the gravy thickening up. 
• Now check taste and then add in the fish. Fish cooks pretty fast. Let this cook for 5-6 minutes. Check the curry and switch off stove. 

That's it! Your fish curry is ready. You can put the curry leaves along with all the ingredients or else you could temper it in coconut oil and add in at the end after curry is ready. I personally find adding all in one go creates a lot less mess to clean up :D

Anyway, the choice is up to you. Try this and check out what consistency of the ingredients finally your taste bud loves. And if you do try this out, please comment below as to how it turned out. This is usually served with rice but I love it with putt too

Ok then guys... see you in the next post! Bye!

Spicy Pepper Chicken

Hello Guys!

I'm back after a 2 year hiatus. which I had devoted to my PG studies. And like my friend Riya said, now that its 'done and dusted', I can concentrate more on my blogs. Blogging has always been my passion. Cooking not so much though. Steffy and I had started this blog with the intend to keep us stay motivated to cook delicious healthy meals daily for our families. But as usual we let other things take priority :D

This one is also an extremely old post which I found in the drafts. At first when I saw it I was sitting and wondering, "How had I made this?" :D (Blogger should have more lively emoticons like whatsapp)

After a bit of searching memory through my old pics, I'm finally going to put down this recipe!
As the name signifies, this is a spicy recipe. So be warned...

Ingredients:

- 1 whole chicken, cleaned, cut into small pieces, without skin.
- 2 big onions, finely chopped
- 1 small sized tomato finely chopped
- 3-4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
- 1.5 inch ginger, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp fresh pepper corns, slightly crushed
- 1/2 tbsp turmeric powder
- 1.5 tbsp coriander powder
- 1/4 tbsp garam masala
- 4-5 tbsp (or the quantity you prefer) Sunflower/Coconut oil.
   You can use any oil you would normally use for cooking.
-  1/2 tbsp lemon juice (optional, but it adds lovely flavour)
- Salt according to your taste
- Curry leaves a little less than a handful
- Coriander leaves for garnishing

How to make:

First: Pour 1 tbsp of oil into a deep bottomed pan. Put in all the dry ingredients and roast for 3-5 minutes and then semi-grind them. I usually make use of fresh ingredients for making the garam masala.

Next: Pour another 3-4 tbsp of oil into the same pan and add in the chopped onions, ginger, garlic and curry leaves when the oil is hot. Let it cook for a few minutes until the onion starts turning slightly brown. Now add in the tomatoes. Let it cook until it turns mushy and oil starts seeping out of the gravy. Then add in the semi- ground dry ingredients. Let it all cook for 5 minutes then add in the chicken, lemon juice and salt. Mix it all together let that cook for another 2-3 minutes then add in 1 and 1/4 cups of water. Mix it. Cover the pan and bring to boil. Then let it simmer for 25-30 minutes or until the chicken is well cooking. Check taste and add in more pepper or salt according to your taste. Garnish with coriander leaves. Serve with ghee rice, chapati's or roti's...
And you should always remember, as with all cooking, we have to get the right taste that our taste buds prefer. So you can always play around with how much of an ingredient you actually want to put in to a food u r preparing.

Hope u guys try this out and love it as much as I did! Well then its bye for now...
Wait, there's this one thing... chatting in whatsapp has ruined my command over spellings. I am unconsciously typing in short forms. Do forgive me, as I have been doing that a lot in this post...

Till my next post then. Thank you so much for taking the time to go through this post!
Tataa!!