Traditional Keralan Fish Curry

Ben and I took a short cooking class while in Fort Cochin, Kerala, at Leelu Homestay.* Our teacher, Leelu, walked us through a Keralan dinner while we took notes. Then we ate the results! It was one of my favourite meals over the past few months. We made fish curry, sambar (a thin veg curry, ubiquitous in South India), okra curry, thoran (coconut-cabbage dish), and chapatis. Yum! She also gave us her own preferred recipe for garam masala (spice mix).

Leelu says that there are 13-15 traditional Keralan fish curries, which require a different masala mix from vegetable or meat curries; fish masala is only used for fish curries. Here's my rendering of our fish curry recipe...

INGREDIENTS:
1 wide, deep, open pan
500 g fish or prawns
1 piece of fresh ginger the size of a man's thumb, sliced
10 cloves garlic, sliced in large chunks
3 or 4 small shallots, sliced (can substitute with red onion)
10-12 Indian curry leaves, fresh (optional)
4 tbsp coconut oil (can sub. with corn or sunflower oil. don't use ghee, butter or olive oil.)
1 tsp mustard seed
MASALA MIX:
...1/2 tsp turmeric
...1/2 tsp fenugreek - don't go overboard
...4 tsp kashmiri chili powder or another med-hot chili powder
...1/2 glass tepid water
4-5 tsp tamarind, dried and seedless
1 c water
1 tsp salt

Leelu begins: "The secret to Indian cooking is to never, ever turn your stove to high heat. Medium or medium-hot is the highest it should go." With this in mind... on medium heat, put coconut oil in pan. Once oil is hot, add mustard seeds. Let them pop. Now add ginger, garlic, shallots. After a minute, add fresh curry leaves (optional).**

In a separate bowl, make your masala mix. Add masala mix to pan, stir in. After ~3 minutes (stirring occasionally), the spices will darken slightly and the oil will separate.

Add tamarind, which you've been soaking in 1/2 cup of water for the past 10 minutes. Include the water.

Add another cup of water and salt. Leelu notes that the fish will happily absorb salt, but you should be careful when adding salt to a veg curry.

Let the now-watery mixture come to a boil. Don't turn the heat up!

Add prawns/chunks of fish, and gently mix them into the sauce. Don't bust up the fish chunks. It's finally time to cover the pan and cook for 20-25 minutes (fish) or 10-15 minutes (prawns). Leelu recommends prawns. As for fish, your best bet is kingfish or another firm white fish. But you can use almost any fish - for softer fish, reduce cooking time.

I fervently hope that this recipe doesn't taste like shit when I try it at home. Leelu obviously uses fresh seafood, but Dawson is about one million kilometres from the nearest ocean, so let's cross our fingers and hope for the best with frozen stuff.

*Kerala Tourism has hosted some cooking videos by Leelu, which I will certainly check out once I'm back in my kitchen.

**A note on curry leaves. According to a seemingly knowledgeable grocer, everyone in South India throws fresh curry leaves in everything; at the veggie market, the vendors will give you free curry leaves with your purchase! I asked the grocer if I could possibly grow a potted curry plant in Canada and he laughed - no - curry plants need a hot, humid climate. If, by some miracle, you can find dried curry leaves, they would work okay.

Scenes From the Mysore Rail Museum

INSPECTION CAR NO. 07330
MY STORY

I stand aloof as I am the snobbish inspection car used exclusively by Senior Railway Officers for the Inspection.

There is nothing wrong, and in fact everything right, with relating history via anthropomorphic storytelling. I am Jack's bile duct, etc. The rail museum also contained a semi-restored Maharani's saloon car, where old-time Indian nobility would have travelled in style - a mega-first-class train carriage that would cause Wes Anderson to get the vapours. Peeking inside the carriage was a moment of butt-clenching jealousy. Oh, to forgo the dust and cockroaches of modern-day Indian Railways...

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The Shore Family Jam Band managed to join forces after all, despite the extra day or three that my parents spent languishing in London during Europe's "freak weather" in the week before Christmas. A few inches of snow in December, what calamity! But now we know with absolute certainty that the Heathrow Airport Authority, among other players, is managed by a squadron of effete turds.

We did a lightning tour of Kochi and Allepey, then spent a few days around Christmas in the Wayanad district of northern Kerala. The longstanding communist government in the state of Kerala must be doing a few things right - more [relative] wealth, less garbage, better roads, and is it possible that the people even seem happier? One of our hosts at Varnam Homestay in Wayanad, Varghese, certainly gave the impression that life is good for many Keralans, including his family. And you can trust a man with a stellar mustache. This much I know.

It's difficult to compare life in Kerala to that in the Yukon. Watching Varghese stroll around his property barefoot in a dhoti (balls free and living the dream), I think of boots and parkas. Sigh. In Wayanad, they grow black pepper, cardamom, coconut, banana, coffee, tea, rice, nutmeg, mangos, tamarind, jackfruit, cinnamon, curry plants... in any old backyard. Goats, chickens, water buffalo, fish pond. Anything a man can't grow, he can buy in the local market a few kilometres away - very likely locally sourced. In Dawson, if the supply trucks stop rolling, we'd be out of edibles right quick. If (when?) our current society implodes, Varghese and co. will be eating like kings and plugging away at the rice harvest while we in Dawson become rioting, cannibalistic jerks. I realize that I'm painting an overly idyllic/idealistic portrait of Keralan living, but...

Altogether it was a successful Christmas in Kerala. We ate homemade, traditional local meals thrice daily, lounged in hammocks, swam in a waterfall, argued over euchre, ate too much chocolate, slept in. My pops gave me some 'light reading' as a gift - Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion - which helps counter my guilt over the fluff-heavy reading list I've been building on this trip. Incidentally, the worst of the fluff has some pretty religious content. Nicholas Sparks has become exceedingly rich writing books about dull (Christian) goodie-goodies, while (Mormon) Stephenie Meyers makes revoltingly un-sexy fiction about vampires and werewolves. So... yeah, I'm having a rich chortle reading Dawkins. He's doing a pretty fine job of convincing me to drop the agnostic safety blanket and jump right in. Indeed, I'm betraying the hippie backpacker tribe - I have not, and likely will not, "find myself" through Indian spirituality. (Sorry.) Three cheers for atheism! I very much enjoyed the following, which was quoted by Dawkins in his book:

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." -H. L. Mencken

Tomorrow the Jam Band travels to the delightfully-named Ooty, formerly a British hill station. Tea, spices, and so on. My phone appears to be back in working order, so if anyone want to give us a dingaling, I think you can call us from Canada by dialing 011 91 0967 416 3361.

Vittles

I don't think this is going to blow anyone's mind, but: Indian food is so damn delicious. We're in Fort Cochin, Kerala, munching on outstanding traditional Keralan foods for breakfast and dinner at our homestay. The toughest question of each day is, "where should we eat lunch??"

The multi-meat dinners of a Canadian Christmas will truly be missed, yes... On the other hand, Indian food is amazing! Barring a rough bout of amoebic dysentery, my plans to lose weight on this trip are wholly shot.

Mum and Dad have spent the last day(+) stranded at the London airport while a pack of English dandies try to deal with the miracle of snow. What a bunch of clowns. Edmonton-Kochi is a brutally long haul even under the best circumstances - I can't imagine how they'll feel once they finally arrive. If they ever get out of London. I have been pestering them to leave Alberta, but forced emigration to England seems a bit extreme.

Stinky Lingam

Commandos from Andaman & Nicobar Tourism may hunt me down for wikileaking the following supersecret, but I live dangerously:

Havelock Island, two hours by ferry from the regional capital Port Blair, receives the lion's share of tourism - mostly related to scuba diving and snorkelling. In spring/summer 2010, the sea temperature around Havelock Island increased enough to seriously mess with animal habitats. Aaaaand, another side effect of the temperature change was that all of the coral above 20 metres was bleached... what was vividly multi-coloured for many years is now pale brown. Yuck. Andaman Islanders are doing a good job of keeping the news hushed up, but word will escape soon enough, and scare away some tourists. What a bummer for snorkelling! It's like watching tv in black and white. Ah well, more time for lazing in hammocks on empty, white sand beaches. I handled it with cool grace.

Nine days in the Andamans was not enough - doi oi! I strongly urge friends and well-wishers to visit, even though it's extremely awkward for North Americans to get there. I particularly liked Neil Island, though perhaps I'm overly influenced by the weather - our 2 days on Neil were a remarkably sunny escape from this plaguey rain and drizzle. Begone already!

We flew back to Chennai on the 15th and skipped straight over to Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram), two hours down the coast. What's with every place in India having multiple names? When it's not confusing, it's just exhausting. Here's a sample conversation that never happened, but could've:

Me: I'm going to Kochi. I would like to book a train.
Some guy: Where?
Me: Kochi
Him: Ohhhh Cochin
Me: Yeah whatever, so how about that train?
Him: Well, the train goes to Ernakulam, not Fort Cochin.
Me: Yes, I know. But I didn't say Fort Cochin, did I? I said Kochi. And you damn well knew what I meant.

Mamallapuram is so-so. Last night we ate dinner with a nice Polish couple who were really excited about the 'good shopping' in this town - whaaa? To my untrained eye, it's all overpriced (Kashmiri textiles), heavy/expensive (massive stone carvings), or something I don't want (jewelry, clothes, etc)... Later, Ben commented that he'd be happy to buy shit, but there is never anything worth buying. Indeed - where are the joke t-shirts? The Shore Temple was underwhelming, which is mildly embarrassing as I'd been hoping to take credit as its founder/builder/namesake. It's one of the sites in India that has been roped off by the Archaeological Survey of India, for which foreigners are required to pay Rs 250... um... roping fee? Thanks for nothing, ASI! There's another temple complex behind the bus station that looks 1. free and 2. better than the Shore Temple. It's on the roster for this afternoon.

Tomorrow we return to Chennai to catch an overnight train to Kochi/Cochin. I can't wait to see the mumsies and dadsies! I get a kick out of meeting familiar folks in strange settings. It's disorienting in a nice way. In Chennai, we dearly hope to catch a screening of the new Tron movie. We remain nerds in faraway lands.

Island Life

Nuff people say, you know they can't believe,
Jamaica, we have a bobsled team.

Ahh, sorry - I can't enjoy island life without fondly remembering Disney's brave bobsled heroes. The (only) difference between them and me: upon my return to Canada, I will not be competing at the 1984 Calgary Olympics. But not for lack of trying!

Since my last post in Hampi, I've been a real lazy shit regarding the blog. Every time I go online I fully intend to write something, but then get distracted looking up Sass Jordan on Wikipedia or laughing at pictures of -40 winter on Facebook. So it goes. I've visited Bangalore, Kochi/Cochin, Varkala, Alleppey/Alappuzha, Kumily, back to Kochi, flight to Chennai, met up with brother Ben, and flight to the Andaman Islands. Here are some delicious highlights of the past two weeks:
- beef curry in Kerala - first beef in India!
- 24 giant prawns in one sitting
- finally figured out how to eat a pomegranate without making a huge mess
- learned to love masala dosa, yum!

Ben and I touched down in Port Blair, the only proper city in the Andaman Islands, yesterday morning. We bought hammocks, stocked up on cash, ate breakfast and took a ferry to Havelock Island. I'm waggling my fingers over the keyboard - how to describe? Let's just say I'm incredibly happy that we decided to come here. The rain that's plagued me for the past week finally cleared up today as we splayed our lily white bodies out on Radhanagar Beach. Ben starts his open water scuba certification course tomorrow - I'm tagging along to snorkel. In four or five days we're planning to switch to neighbouring Neil Island. The Andamans seem to be a real honeymoon destination for Indian tourists, which I find cute but highly irritating, as I miss Ian terribly.

My posts here will have to remain relatively short, as the internet is slow and expensive. Coming next time: stay tuned for guest blogger Ben Skye Shore!