Nice and Easy Fish Curry (Florence Tan)

When I was born in Singapore, my parents were renting one little room in a three-room HDB (Housing Development Board) flat. At that time, we didn't have money to buy a flat and couldn't afford to rent an entire flat for ourselves. To afford a flat, my mum had to work immediately after she had me and my grandmother (my mum's mum) is the primary care for me at all times. I grew up living with my grandmother for years until I married and moved to Australia.

Although we are not the Peranakan, I remember cooking a lot of Nyonya food when I was growing up living with my grandmother... We used to cook Nyonya curry, Nyonya glutinous rice dumplings, make Nyonya kuehs and bake lots of pineapple tarts. At that time, my grandmother and I love hanging out and cooking in her kitchen, listening too Hokkien songs. Being a typical ambitious generation Y Singaporean girl, I grew up telling myself that I'm not going to cook and raise kids at home and so didn't bother learning any cooking skills from my grandmother. Sad that I'm kind of regretful now. I really miss my grandmother and her cooking and sad that I can't turn back the clock now.

Thanks to internet, cookbooks and blogging, I'm glad that I'm picking up Nyonya cooking these days. This nice and easy curry is from the book, Recipes From A Nyonya Kitchen by Florence Tan and I actually bought this book through Lena's (Frozen wings) recommendation. Thanks Lena! This is a good curry from a good book!

Nyonya Fish Curry

The star ingredients of this dish - Curry powder and Curry leaves

More ingredients to make the curry paste

Cooking the fragrant curry paste

Homemade curry gravy - Ta dah!

Adding in our favourite fish and okra...

Beautiful, isn't it?

Thumb up, mummy! I must give myself a thumb up too for all the effort learning to cook :)

Here's the recipe from the book, Recipes From A Nyonya Kitchen by Florence Tan
(with my note and modification in blue)

Serves 6

180 ml (3/4 cup) cooking oi
(I used canola oil and reduced the amount to 1/3 cup)
3 sprigs curry leaves
2.5 cm cinnamon stick
4 cardamoms
40g (1/2 cup) fish curry powder, blended with 90ml water
600ml (2 1/2 cups) coconut milk, extracted from 300g grated coconut
(I used Ayam brand light coconut milk)
90ml (3/8 cup) tamarind juice, extracted from 1 tbsp tamarind pulp and 90 ml water
(I used 60ml (1/4 cup) of tamarind puree plus 120 ml water) 
500g Spanish mackerel fillets
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp seasoning powder
8 young lady's fingers (okra), stemmed
(We like okra very much and I have added 15)
1 red chilli, halved lengthways and sliced diagonally
1 green chilli, halved lengthways and sliced diagonally

Finely Ground Paste

7 dried chillies, soaked in water and drained
20 shallots, peeled
3 cloves garlic, peeled
3 candlenuts
1 cm galangal, peeled
2.5 cm ginger, peeled
3 stalks lemon grass, sliced

Method

Heat the cooking oil and fry curry leaves, cinnamon stick, cardamoms and finely ground paste until fragrant.

Add the curry paste and fry until aromatic. Stir in the coconut milk and tamarind juice.

Bring to a boil and add fish. Season with soy sauce, salt and seasoning powder. Stir occasionally to prevent curdling. After cooking for 5 mins, add lady's fingers (okra) and chillies. Cook for another 4 mins until the fish is done.

Happy Cooking
Please support me and like me at Facebook...