Here goes the recipe …

Ingredients

Fish – 1lb cut into pieces

Shallots – 6, sliced

Ginger – 1 inch, finely chopped

Garlic – 3 cloves, finely chopped

Mustard – 1 tsp

Kudam Puli (Meen puli) – 3 pieces 

Chili powder – 1 tsp

Kashmiri Chili powder – ½ tsp

Turmeric powder – ½ tsp

Methi Powder – ½ tsp

Salt – to taste

Curry leaves – 8 to l0 leaves

Oil – 2 tsp

Method

Soak the tamarind in ½ cup of hot water for 10 minutes. 

In a non-stick vessel, heat oil and splutter mustard seeds & add curry leaves.

Add sliced shallots, and saute till transparent.

Add the ginger & garlic and saute for a minute, now saute all the spices – Chili powder, Turmeric powder and Kashmiri Chili powder together for 2 mins.

Add the tamarind along with the water and  salt;  let this masala boil for a few minutes.

Add the fish pieces gently to this mixture, add  ½ cup of water, cover and let it cook in low heat till the fish is cooked.  You can adjust the quantity of water depending on how much gravy you like.  

Once done, add the Methi powder, mix well and simmer it for a few minutes. Be careful not to break the fish in this process!

Remove from heat & serve with Rice. Personally I like this combo, combined with Cabbage thoran & Lime pickle. It is a deadly combination, try it out and  let me know!

Note: Please keep an eye while the fish is cooking, I am a big fan of Tilapia which cooks fast, most of the times I start multitasking only to find my  fish all broken and aviyal types

Also you can increase the quatity of chili powder, to spice it up.

Back home, mom makes this in a earthern pot, manchatty ? This is supposed to enhance the flavor of this curry a lot, though I’ve not yet found any difference … Well then I can’t make out the difference between olive oil & coconut oil too ! Weird me …

However, one thing I can vouch for is the taste that it attains when kept overnight .. mostly due to all the flavour from the tamarind & the fish blended . The moral of the story, use manchatty or not, make sure that you keep some leftover for the next day!