What other than food to bring back waves of nostalgia !! That taste of a lamb curry I had many winters back on vacation, still lingering on my taste-buds. A jackfruit dish Aunt used to make whenever we visited during summer. Grandmas mango pickles patiently waiting in the sun. The mind-boggling spread of Pithe puli during Sankranti and what divine flavors !!!
Some recipes I have been indeed lucky to inherit, yet there’s so many more I wish I had. And I have spent many a morning laboring hard to reconstruct those lost recipes. Antiquated cookbooks, sourced post hours of patient scouting, from ancient second-hand bookshops and flea-markets, their dog-eared mildewed pages crumbling on every turn. Faded hand-written scribbles of Maa, must have been quick dictations from Grandma, long forgotten in the far corner of the dresser. Google search. Fellow bloggers recipes.
And of course, trial and error. Try. Taste. Adjust. Try. Taste. Adjust. Persistent persevering cycles of them. Till that old taste comes flooding back.
This recipe, a stir-fried Bombay Duck with an overdose of onions and an explosion of chillies, was one such, simple, humble, yet took me a while to get it perfect, just the taste and texture I grew up with.
Try it for sure the next time your mind settles on Bombay Duck !!!
Loitya Maacher Jhuri Bhaja (Spicy stir-fried bombay duck)
Ingredients
- 400 g loitya maach or bombay duck
- 4 - 5 big onion finely sliced
- 1 tbsp chopped garlic
- 2-3 tbsps green chilies chopped
- 1 tsp turmeric powder
- 2 tsps red chili powder
- 4 tbsps mustard oil
- 1/4 cup coriander leaves chopped
- 1 tbsp tender coriander shoot finely chopped
- to taste salt
Instructions
- De-head and clean the bombay duck carefully. Your fishmonger could as well do this for you if you were patient enough to wait :).
- Heat oil in a pan, add the chopped garlic and fry on a medium flame till golden. Add the chopped onions and green chilies. Continue to cook till the onion starts to caramelize.
- Add the bombay duck, turmeric powder, red chili powder and salt. Turn the heat to a high and stir occasionally. The bombay duck shall release plenty of water and break up, don't worry, keep stirring once in a while. Once the fish starts falling off the central bone, carefully remove the bones with a spoon.
- Now reduce to a medium flame and continue to cook till this turns golden, slightly sticky in texture and starts releasing oil. Yes, it was this simple, we are done !!
- Adjust the seasonings (maybe a couple of extra chilies to spike up the heat further) and add the chopped coriander leaves.and shoots. Serve hot with steamed rice.
Im so craving for this… 🙂
Beautiful write up!! Your writing skill is so lucid… i wonder sometimes!! How beautifully you weave your words and create the story. And the dish .. I just love Loitya jhuri…
I never had bombay duck.. so unknown to its taste. But I must say!!!What a write up !!! Excellent story-line on food nostalgia. Those story of the culinary treasures passing down to generation by generation. Those vivid memories…. Can feel each line of the story. So loved it