Foli Macher Jhol or Bronze Feather Back Fish curry
Foli Macher Jhol
Foli fish is a very tasty and healthy fish. But has lots of lots of bones in it. Since childhood, I've never had this fish. I was too much scared of such bony fishes, like foli, bata, charapona. Though I'm a big fan of Hilsa. Somehow I manage to eat hilsa. But this one I've never had in my life. My mom is a great lover of this fish. She can die for this fish. She loves to cook light runny curry with this fish and have with plain rice. But in recent days these fishes are not easily available in Kolkata. But whenever she gets this, definitely she would buy this fish. Though I and my dad never have this fish. We are happy with our dal bhat. In Hyderabad only on Sunday in several places temporary fish market are available. And the fishes are too cheap there, and you can get varieties of Bengali and South Indian fishes there. I used to get 2,3 types of fishes every Sunday from there. A few weeks ago, I went for Sunday fish market. And by mistakenly I've bought Foli/Folui fish, though it was Chitol fish and then came back to home, I thought of showing the picture of the fish to my mom to confirm whether it was chitol or not. But seeing the picture of the fish, my mom just jumped in joy. as it was foli her favorite fish. But I became scared of the fish. " How will I eat that fish? It's too bony. Though it was not very costly, still wasting food is not good. so thought to give it to my husband. He can manage this types of bony fish. So the first day I cooked the fish with mustard paste & gave it to him. He ate it nicely. When I told my mom about that, she told me to cook the fish in the very simple way and asked me to eat like I eat Hilsa. I just followed her recipe and cooked the fish, and believe me the curry was so tasty and the trick she told me actually worked and I ate 2 times the fish curry. I was runny but spicy curry. And with steamed rice, it tasted like heaven. So no more boring stories, let's check the easiest recipe....
Details
Ingredients for Foli Macher Jhol
Preperation steps for Foli Macher Jhol
Take the fish pieces, wash under tap water, remove scales if any left. Now rinse and pat dry them and put on a plate. Marinate the fish pieces with salt and turmeric and keep aside for 10 minutes.
Take a pan/earthen utensil, heat the 2 tablespoons mustard oil in it. When the oil is smokey, add the marinated fish pieces and fry till they are nice golden in color. Take them out of the pan and keep into a bowl.
In the meantime take a bowl, add turmeric, cumin powder & red chili powder and some water to make a masala paste.
Add rest of oil in the same oil, or you may discard the fried oil. Now temper the oil with kalonji and silted green chilies. Fry for a while and add the masala paste, little salt and keep stirring for some time.
When the oil will start separating add the fried fish into the pan and keep stirring them too, but slowly. Otherwise, fishes can be broken.
Now add 1 cup of warm water to the pan, and cover the pan to cook nicely for 2 minutes on simmer.
After 2 minutes open the pan and higher the gas. Boil the gravy for another 2 minutes and turn off the heat.
Pour the curry into a bowl and garnish with slitted green chilies.
Serve with hot steamed rice.
If you wish, you can add potatoes, cut into lengthwise. Fry them after frying the fish pieces, and add them into the gravy and boil till the potatoes are tender and soft.
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