A not very nice Sri Lankan fish curry

When someone says curry, I always think 'yum'. I should stop doing that. A curry isn't always nice. There are so many different ones and when it comes to the variety you get in a restaurant, I have actually only tried a handful. As many others, I started with a classic chicken korma, but quite soon upgraded to a tikka masala and stuck with that one for several years. Eventually I discovered the biryani, awesome! That became my new go-to curry when we had a a take away, until we ordered from a place where they couldn't make a decent vegetable sauce to go with it. Time to get adventurous again... Lamb bhuna, oh yeah! Now we're talking.

Around this time I abandoned the ready made jar sauces and started using curry powder when cooking at home and little by little, more spices were introduced. One day I made a curry without using curry powder at all and it came out alright. Because I now know that I can cook a tasty curry without the help of a jar, I allow myself the odd spoonful of paste every so often, but more often than not I make do without.

Lately I have been working my way around the globe on a culinary food journey, cooking meals from different countries. Searching for new recipes, I quickly realised that India isn't the only place with curry dishes. I am yet to cook my way through the world of curries, one nation at the time, but that will be another challenge... maybe. 

Anyway, in regards to this family of meals, I have learnt that the main spices are turmeric, cumin, coriander, chilli, garlic and ginger, with an addition of various other ones depending on what curry you want to make. In this particular dish, a few of the standard spices were missing. Instead mustard seeds, fennel seeds, pepper corns and cinnamon were added. There was also something typical Sri Lankan, which name I can't remember, but it could be substituted with a mix of lemon juice and brown sugar, so that's what I used.

Embarrassingly enough, I was so disappointed with the taste of this meal, that I didn't save the recipe and now I have forgotten the amounts of each ingredients. It doesn't really matter, as I don't recommend it anyway. As my blogs are less of a recipe share and more of a cooking experience documentation, I will still show you what I did. Please do not do this. It isn't nice. You will be disappointed and I don't want the blame for that. 

This is what I did:

1. I got all the listed ingredients out, plus the inside of a couple of courgettes out. The day before I served stuffed courgette boats and I didn't want to waste the cut outs.

2. The cod fillets were marinated with a little bit of olive oil, turmeric and salt.

3. Black pepper corns, fennel seeds and yellow mustard seeds were ground as much as I had energy and muscles enough to manage.

4. The onion, garlic and tomatoes were chopped.

5. So were the pepper and the courgette cut outs.

6. In a sauce pan with a little oil, I fried off the home ground spices and a cinnamon stick.

7. Curry powder was added.

8. Then onion, garlic and chilli.

9. Cumin and coriander went in. I can't remember why I added both, as only coriander was in the recipe. I probably felt that the cumin jar felt left out in the spice rack. I'm a sensitive cook.

10. The seasoning got up my nose and I had to run out of the kitchen to sneeze. That was my cue to add the tomatoes.

11. Then the pepper and courgette.

12. The lemon & sugar mixture went in along with chicken stock. Odd choice of stock for a fish recipe, but there we are. I wasn't the one who wrote it.

13. I left it to simmer for a while.

14. Finally a splash of coconut milk was added. The recipe wanted thick tinned milk, but I tend to use the drinking variety, which makes it quite watery. Sure that would have made a difference in regards to the thickness of the sauce, but not really to the flavour.

15. To make it look as pretty as possible, I made a ring of colourful rice. This was a mixture of jewelled parsnip rice and seasoned regular rice.

16. The curry went in the middle of the ring of rice and that ring turned out to be the only nice part of the meal. 

Let me repeat something really important now. 

Do not make this meal.