Travels for Taste

Tales of travel and food with a touch of spice

CKP style King Fish fish curry

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CKP style King Fish fish curry

Leaving your home country and more importantly leaving behind your near and dear ones is never easy. I sorely miss a lot of things about my life back home and one of the things I miss most is lazy Sunday afternoons at my parent’s place. Like any typical teenager if you do move out from home during college years you would be better off dealing with moving out your parents after you get married but I never lived away from my parents and it was only after I was married that hubster and I moved into our own place, which happened to be very close to my mum’s!

CKP style Seer Fish Curry recipe

So most Sunday afternoons we would make our way to mum’s and Baba would be helping Aai cook our favourite Sunday meal of chicken curry and rice, or sometimes when he was in a mood for seafood he would go Supekar’s fish market and queue up for fresh Surmai (Marathi Surmai /सुरमई चे कालवण, Indo-Pacific king mackerel or popularly spotted seer fish-Scomberomorus guttatus), Pomfret and my fav fresh prawns Ummm!

Fresh Fish Market – Pune, Maharashtra, India

CKP Surmai Kalvan Recipe

This recipe for Surmai/Kingfish /Mackerel curry is his favourite and I love how Aai (means mother in Marathi my mother tongue)makes it so very delicious using a traditional hand me down recipe typical to the CKP community (Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu (CKP), is an ethnoreligious community of South Asia). We call it Surmaiche Kalvan (सुरमई चे कालवण) – Kalvan means curry in Marathi. If we were in Pune today I would most certainly have surprised Baba by cooking up a feast for him and Aai. Baba this post is for you and for Aai thank you for being the most parents anyone could ever ask for, the best childhood ever and for believing in us, for being the strong presence every girl wants her father to be. I love you more than words can say Baba and I miss you heaps and tons!

सुरमई चे कालवण

CKP Style King Fish curry Recipe

C.K.P Style King Fish curry Recipe

Manjiri Chitnis
Heirloom reipe for an authentic recipe from Maharashtra, India from the C.K.P community – King Fish curry Recipe
5 from 2 votes
Print Recipe
Course Main Course
Cuisine Indian
Servings 2 people

Ingredients
  

  • 4 medium-sized Surmai ( King Fish/ Seer Fish) fillets
  • 3 tbsp Coriander and Green chilli paste
  • 2 tsp Ginger – Garlic paste
  • 2 tsp Red Chilli powder
  • 1 1/2 tsp Turmeric
  • 4 cloves Garlic cloves with skin on
  • 3 tbsp Grated Coconut
  • 1 small pinch Asafoetida/Hing
  • 2 tbsp Refined Oil
  • 1/4 Lime Juice
  • Salt to taste
  • Fresh coriander a tiny palmful washed and finely chopped for garnishing

Instructions
 

  • Wash the Surmai/Kingfish /Mackerel steaks/ fillets
  • Marinate fillets with red chilli powder, turmeric, salt, ginger-garlic paste, coriander – green chilli paste and set aside for at least 40 minutes
  • Heat oil in a saucepan, add a pinch of asafoetida and then add the crushed garlic cloves with their skins on and as they start to brown
  • Add the marinated fish and toss around in the hot oil for 30 seconds
  • Add the finely grated fresh coconut, stir in enough water to ensure that the curry is the right consistency, not too thick and cook on a low flame with lid for about under 5 minutes.
  • Fresh fish cooks very quickly, do take care not to over cook the fillets
  • Add salt as required bearing in mind that when the fish was marinated salt was used
  • Squeeze the lime juice into the curry
  • Garnish with finely chopped fresh green coriander (cilantro) leaves
  • Serve with steaming hot boiled rice and allow yourself to enjoy this simple yet classic fish curry
Keyword Surmai Curry

Washed fresh fillets of King Fish or Surmai or Seer Fish


This is another fabulous recipe that originates from the western coast of India, the Konkan coastline, dotted by beautiful coconut trees, the coastline is abundantly blessed with fresh seafood and natural scenic beauty read beautiful beaches with soft sands and plenty of sunshine. A lot of people would also add tamarind paste to the curry but we do not. Tamarind trees are also found in abundance

If you are looking for fresh Kingfish in London the best place to find it is at supermarkets like H-Mart. The Kingfish that you will get here is from the North  Atlantic waters. You can also buy Wahoo steaks from Wing Yip but the taste is not as pronounced and the flesh is not as tender, besides wahoo steaks are bigger and need more seasoning and should be consumed on the same day to enjoy flavours which are at their best in a freshly made fish curry. I’d say they taste better in a curry than fried and if you do fry them do add a large squeeze of lime after you have fired them. Since the Kingfish belongs to the Mackerel family, the mackerel will take all these marinade flavours beautifully and works well both fried and in a curry Konkani style.

My traditional CKP Surmai kalvan/curry recipe works well with pomfret too.

EXPLORE MORE RECIPES FROM MAHARASHTRA, INDIA:

Masoorachi Aamti or Red Lentil Curry

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Akkhe Masoor or whole red lentils

Masoorachi Aamti or Red Lentil Curry – Recipe adaptation from Mother, Mother in Law and a close C.K.P friend – who loves to stir up some spicy CKP fare and generally succeeds at it 🙂

Masoorachi Aamti or Red Lentil Curry

Delicious, easy and quick recipe for using whole red lentils with skin on
Print Recipe
Course Main Course
Cuisine Indian
Servings 4 portions

Equipment

  • 1 Pan with lid
  • 1 Knife
  • 1 Chopping Board
  • 1 Spatula

Ingredients
  

  • 300 Grams MasoorDal (Red Lentil) with their brown covers intact and whole
  • 1 tsp Mustard Seeds
  • 3 cloves Garlic with skin on
  • 5-6 Curry leaves
  • 2-3 Green Chillies
  • 1 tsp Cumin
  • 1.5 tbsp freshly grated soft white coconut
  • 1.5 tbsp Goda Masala
  • 2 tbsp Coriander Powder
  • 1.5 tbsp Ginger – Garlic Paste
  • 3 mediumsized Red onions, chopped fine
  • 1/2 tsp Asafoetida
  • 1.5 tsp Turmeric powder
  • 2 tsp Red Chilli Powder
  • Jaggery to taste
  • Salt to taste
  • 2 – 3 petals Garcinia Indica – wet, salt preserved
  • Fresh leaves of Coriander chopped fine for dressing
  • 2 tbsp Sunflower Oil

Instructions
 

  • Soak the washed lentils in luke warm water for about 20 minutes. You can par-boil the lentils too, to save time. t
  • Heat two large generous tablespoons of oil in a wok, no weight loss tip this, huh? Indeed!
  • Add mustard seeds and wait for them to pop.
  • To this hot oil, dd Asafoetida, crushed garlic cloves , let the skin remian attached.
  • When the garlic is starting to brown add the curry leaves, green chillies, cumin and then the fresh grated coconut.
  • Now stir in the Goda masala, coriander powder, turmeric powder, red chilli powder, ginger garlic paste and coriander chilli paste and mix well.
  • Now add the chopped onion and cook them on a low heat until they begin to break down and caramelise.
  • Drain excess water from the lentils and add them into this spice and oil mix. Stir well. Cover and cook on medium to low heat until almost done. Check occasionally and stir as so to ensure it does not burn.
  • Add the soaked Garcinia Indica alongwith the water it was soaking in. Mix well. Cook without the lid on low heat until fully cooked.
  • Season with finely chopped fresh as ever coriander andserve piping hot with phulkas dripping with ghee (clarified butter) or the plain old boiled white rice.
Keyword Masoor

Recipe Notes

  • Goda Masala – this is a mix of various spices readily available in Asian Grocery stores it’s basically a mixture of dry coconut roasted with a mixture of at least 10 different spices, best of all it’s available to buy online at Red Rickshaw – previously called itadka.com. Refrigerate this pack to increase shelf life,yayay so many tips from me, don’t YOU just LOVE me if u better don’t just READ this make n slurp it all ALONE, drop me A LINE and thank meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee) Better still make your own, recipe coming soon – watch this space!
  • Aamsul / Amsul – also known as Kokum or Garcinia Indica, is a plant belonging to the mangosteen family (Clusiaceae). This is one of those revered ingredients that is commonly used in Indian cooking especially in Maharashtra, along the coast. Much like my beloved coconut this fruit has multiple applications and is very versatile, besides it is such a good-looking gorgeous and delicious tropical fruit.
  • Coriander and Chilli paste – 2 small-sized bunches of coriander pureed with 2-3 green chillies – freeze and use on demand, handy and 1 of my 5 “save your face” purees for unwanted guests popping in at odd hours – the other 4 are listed at the end of this recipe.
  • The other 4 SAVE ME NOW pastes are: a garlic ginger coarse paste, Finely grated fresh white coconut paste, Tomato red onion puree -1:3, And the best one for last aye? – a few onions chopped lengthwise n lightly roasted in a kadhai (wok) with fresh white coconut finely grated till they turn slightly brown, then churned into a paste in the mixer.
  • The masoor dal can be done 2 ways for stage 1 of this process, 1st is the short cut which I love as I suddenly get an urge mid-evening to cook this typical CKP recipe to appease my urges to run to Heathrow n take the next flight to my parents home in Pune, hummmmm, so we soak the masoor dal 2 measures feeds 2 adults with a ravenous appetite and leaves some to spare.

Key

This is the key to a mystical tropical paradise…. errrr… sorry but it is not, it is simply the key to some important words that you will encounter pretty often while reading my posts or watching my videos. I am after all a student of Chemistry and treat my kitchen like my personal laboratory where I create my own kitchen experiments! This is why the word ‘Key’ reminds me of my Chemistry textbook in my school years 😉

  • C.K.P stands for Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu a sub-section of the Maharashtrian community in India and they generally hail from the coastal regions and hence are rather partial to freshly grated coconut and amsool in their food, not to mention their love for fresh fish and mutton, oh yeah!
  • Daal is used to loosely to refer to the uncooked Lentil and AAMTI is a Marathi word meaning cooked curry.
  • Coriander for my friends from across the pond is Cilantro.
  • Phodni – Marathi for tempering, also one of my favourite words to say. Follow my hashtag on Instagram #phodnitales , please pretty please? 🙂
  • Kadhai – The Marathi pronunciation sounds like it ends in ‘ee’, while the Hindi pronunciation stretches the first ‘a’ following the ‘K’ to sound like ‘aaa’ , easy or what?!
  • Phulkas – Also called chapattis or the delightful Indian Bread soft and fluffy and fresh off the pan has ghee smeared on it to pack some punch and many, many calories 🙂

EXPLORE MORE RECIPES FROM MAHARASHTRA, INDIA

Random Thoughts

I would totally rechristen the word ‘Method’ in a recipe post with the name ‘Process ‘ Why, well once a Chemistry student and a retail employee I guess some things just stay with you forever. Also, instead of “PREPARATION” I choose the word ”Process” which is drilled into a Retail Managers brain like young parents making their kids rote learn alphabets)

Pic 1: The saucepan contains oil heated and then the asafoetida, cumin seeds, mustard seeds, then the garlic, chopped green chillies and curry leaves and last but the best one is GODA masala

Pic 2 :Chopped red onion added to the mix

Pic 3: That’s the dal cooking

Pic 4 & 5: All done , the AROMA is filling my senses and transporting me into my MIL’s kitchen , I want to HUG her nowwwwwwwwwww

P.S: Will post pictures to compare the 2 sizes of Mustard seeds at a later date , I am now going to be too busy slurping my Aamti off the plate 🙂

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