Fish Curry, Village Style is delicious and traditional nattu meen kulambu. Made with aromatic spices and fresh ingredients, this recipe surely is a fish lover’s delight.
For more seafood recipes try the following
Life has got faster and busier, and with that, we tend to get most of the spices packaged. In olden days our moms and grand moms would grind everything fresh at home. The taste that comes with the fresh ingredients is something that can’t be matched.
You will find the use of fresh ingredients and traditional methods being used in villages even today. This fish curry, village style is truly inspired by it.
I had a neighbor who belonged to a village in Tamil Nadu. I have since forgotten what was the name of the village, but it was somewhere very close to Chennai.
She would make the most tasty and truly traditional fish curry, Village Style. She would finish grinding the spices and other fresh ingredients in a stone pestle in a jiffy. The precision and speed with which she did was simple amazing. It was truly a delight to watch her make the Fish curry, Village Style.
You can make this amazingly tasty Fish Curry, Village Style with coconut oil, gingelly oil or groundnut oil. The best way to make this dish is to cook it in a clay pot. But if you do not own one, then you can always make it in your regular pan. It would still taste awesome.
We would first roast the spices like the cumin seeds, fennel, coriander seeds etc and then grind them together with the fresh ingredients. The freshly ground spices would fill your home with an amazing aroma. The fragrant smell would simply fill your nostrils and your family would line up to the kitchen. That is the beauty of making recipes with fresh ingredients.
We will add freshly ground ginger garlic paste too. The fresh ginger garlic paste in any curry smells awesome.
So let’s get started with the Fish Curry, Village Style, Nattu Meen Kulambu
Fish Curry, Village Style, Nattu Meen Kulambu
What You Need:
- 1 kg fish, any vareity (I have used Sultan Ibrahim)
- 4 tbsp oil
- 2 green chili, slit
- 2 sprigs of curry leaves
- 1 tsp turmeric powder
- lemon sized tamarind, soaked in water and juice extracted from it
- salt to taste
For roasting
- 1 tsp oil
- 2 tsp cumin seeds / jeeragam
- 1 tsp fennel seeds / sombu
- 10 dry red chillies
- 3 tbsp coriander seeds
- 1 inch ginger, peeled and cut into small pieces or grated
- 8 - 9 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped into small pieces
- 1 cup / half of a big coconut, grated
To Grind along with the Spices
- 2 medium sized onions roughly chopped
- 3 to matoes, roughly chopped
How To Make:
For Roasting
- Take the 1 tsp oil in a pan and heat it. Add the cumin seeds, fennel seeds, dry red chili and coriander seeds. Lightly roast till a nice aroma emanates from it and they are lightly brown. Then add ginger, garlic, coconut and roast again till they are lightly brown.
- Remove from heat and allow this roasted spices to cool down.
- Once the spices are cool, grind to make a fine powder.
- Add the onion and tomato to this spice powder and grind together again to make a fine paste.
For making the Fish Curry
- Heat the 4 tbsp oil in a pan.
- Add the green chili and curry leaves.
- Next add in the spiced onion tomato paste and fry till oil starts leaving the sides of the pan.
- Add turmeric powder, fish pieces, tamarind juice and salt. Pour in 2 cups of water. Bring this to a boil on high heat.
- Once the curry starts boiling, reduce the heat to low. Allow to cook till the fish is cooked and oil starts floating on top.
- Garnish with coriander leaves and serve hot with rice.
Recipe Notes
Signing off until next time,
Fareeha.
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