The Pink Café

This is yet another traditional Kerala recipe, in which fish is roasted in plantain leaves. There is a two step process in cooking fish, first by shallow frying and then roasted inside a plantain leaf covered with masalas. So my experience with pollichathu was with Karimeen alone until this time, my favorite fish, which is called Pearl spot in English. All these while I haven't tried any other fish for this recipe. So let me tell you the story of how Ayala came into picture :D This happened on one fine day, my mom in law was telling me that the women who brings fish has brought lots of Mackerel and many other fishes and convinced her to buy a lot of them. So she was in a confusion on what will we do with all these, as weekend was almost going to finish and everyone of us moving to different places. And the same curry or fry would be boring and won't be appreciated by the men's league at home :D Then I went for helping her with the fish dilemma, she was having and...

I am having a over proudly feeling of being a Malayali, especially when I make Kerala dishes. It can be because of the rich authentic cuisine heritage we have, that each dish is like a golden feather on our crown. That was too much :P I know.  Even when trying all international dishes, the satisfaction making a Kerala food cannot be reached from any other recipe. It's not about the taste I am talking about, but the food making process. It could be because of I am a hard core mallu :P  So coming to this dish, I like to call it "meen mulakittath" and of course it's inspired from central Kerala fish preparation. Trivandrum style fish curry usually have grated coconut, which I am used to, growing up, but this one I made sure to have the coconut inclination with the base of central Kerala fish recipe. So I have some coconut milk going on in this. This was made as accompaniment to kappa roast on Christmas day, on our Christmas lunch spread. And kappa, oh that...