Rui Maacher Sukha (Dry Carp Curry)

At our daughter’s school they get turns in “cafeteria duty”. For a week she gets to serve lunch to the entire school and in return she gets to eat lunch without having to buy that. This serves as a great learning on work and compensation.

Having had “formal training” we thought we’d give her newly learned skills a trial at home. So we asked her to serve lunch. Promptly she headed to the kitchen, washed her hands, patted them dry and asked for gloves :). It took some convincing that gloves are optional at home. After that she did a fantastic job of laying down the table mats and serving us lunch. The food was extra sweet.

Ingredients

1. 4 steak pieces of rui (Any sweet water carp can be used)
2. 1 medium onion thinly sliced
3. 1tsp. ginger juice
4. 2tbsp. tomato paste
5. 1tsp. mustard paste
6. 1tsp. turmeric powder
7. 1tbsp. chili powder
8. 2,3 bay leaves
9. 1/2 tsp. nutmeg (jaifal) powder
10. 1tbsp. ghee (clarified butter)
11. 1tsp. sugar
12. Salt
13. Mustard oil

Procedure

Smear the fish steaks with turmeric powder and salt. Keep it marinated for about 15 minutes.

Heat mustard oil in a wok or kadai and fry fish pieces one by one till both sides take a golden hue. Remove and keep them aside.

Take some more mustard oil and heat it up. Add bay leaves and sliced onions to it. Fry them on medium heat till the sides of the onions turn light brown. Add tomatoe puree and mustard paste to it. Mix everything well and fry them together in low heat.

Now add turmeric and chili powder to the fried spices and season it with salt and sugar.

Add fried fish steaks to it and pour half cup of water to it. Let it simmer on high flame till all the  fish pieces are well coated with the spices. This is a dry dish, so dry up any excess moisture.

Add ghee and one tsp. ginger juice to it. Wait for a minute before you turn off the heat. Finish it off with a pinch of nutmeg powder.

Enjoy with steaming white rice or pulao.