A new discovery from Kerala trip.
The recipe uses karimeen or pearl fish, but my hunch is it will be equally tasty with pomfret or even bhekti fillet.
Anyway, assuming you got hold of pearl fish, cut some slits across the fish.
Now grind some garlic, red chilli, ginger, black pepper, curry leaves, salt, turmeric together. Put in the masala as much as you can digest. Keralites like it hot, so the deadly combo of many red chilli and black pepper is used. We bengalis on the other hand probably should go easy on the chilli.
Now apply the paste all over the fish insert some inside the slits and fish.
Keep it for at least an hour.
Now wrap it up in a kalapata and fry it in oil in a pan .... if you dont have kalapata, just fry the fish in oil, not much oil is needed. Only some of the marination masala will be lost if directly fried in oil.
If you can get hold of coconut oil ... great, otherwise refined oil would do.
Now fry some onion, green chili, curry leaves in a teaspoon of oil.
When the onion becomes transparent put in the fish, fold in the spices.
Add 2 tbsp/fish coconut milk. Make sure whole fish gets to fold in the milk.
Now simmer for few minutes and wait till the water evaporates.
Now serve with some green salad or rice....
