In the second episode of our North Kerala Food series, we are visiting the home of our gracious host Abida Rasheed Ji to savour a typical Malabari fish meal. She is one of Kerala's finest home chefs who is on a mission to bring Malabari cuisine into limelight through her marvelous culinary pursuits. Because of the proximity to the sea, fish is an integral part of this cuisine and we too were excited to try some of the traditional preparations.
On reaching there, with the warmest smile, Abida Ji welcomed us with pacha manga juice and erachi pathiri. The former was a raw mango and green chilli based sweet and savoury drink that turned out to be absolutely refreshing. Erachi pathiri resembled a chicken stuffed paratha, except for the fact that it had an egg coating.
After polishing off the welcome snacks we headed to the other part of the house for the meal preparation. There were four dishes to be prepared all of whose mise en place were in place. She started with the nethal thenga aracha curry. For this she took an earthen pot and added water, tamarind, tomatoes and green chillies into it and nicely mashed them all by hand because it brings out more flavour. Next she brought it to a boil and added coconut paste followed by anchovies. When it was ready she tempered it with shallots and curry leaves fried in coconut oil.
Next was the turn of meen porichathu or Malabar style fish fry which is a household favourite thing. For this she took three varieties of whole fishes, Mackarel, red snapper and sardines. Abida ji has curated a special range of spices for authentic Malabari dishes and she used the porichathu masala to marinade all the fishes. Those were then fried in coconut oil along with garlic and curry leaves.
The last dish was muru kurumugulagu varathiyathu. It was a simple yet incredible dish made with just three ingredients-fresh oysters, coconut oil and lots of black pepper. We weren't sure how it would taste but honestly it turned out to be a stunner. Finally we were done with all the cooking and it was time to dig into the delicious spread. There was parboiled rice as accompaniment. Food was served in earthen plates as Abida believes that earthenware enhances the flavours manifold times.
Follow Abida Rasheed at
www.abidarasheed.com/
/ abidarasheedclt
www.youtube.com/@abidarasheed...
About the host:
anubhavsapra.com/
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Text by Swetaleena Nayak