Meen Peera or Fish with grated coconut

The New year has come.. And by today this year is shorter by a month!! And yeah I have been missing from this blog world for over a month!! Lot of my friends(who know me personally) called up, smsed and scrapped me asking whether I am alive or not coz I was not active on my blog!! Now that was so sweet of all of them to have showed that affection towards me and motivated me so much that today I am back to business. May be its the new year hang over or something of that sort, today I am short of words so lets get to the recipe directly.

Meen Peera is a Central Kerala preparation!! Rather, yet another innovative creation using fish. Its a change from the usual fish curry or fry one has on a regular day. Also called peera at times, it can be prepared using small fish like smelt or locally refered as Kozhuva and occasionally using small sardines too!! I have had peera of seer fish (Ney meen) once and have heard people say that even tuna can be used. So basically what I learnt is that there is no hard and fast rule as to which fish to be used for Peera!! Its a very easy recipe - less time, less oil, less spice!!


Ingredients:

• 250 gms - Fish of your choice( i used sardine for this time)
• 2 pieces - Kokum (kudampuli)
• 5-6 - Shallots
  
• 2-3 - Green chillies
• 3/4 cup - Grated coconut
• 1/2 '' piece - Ginger
• 1 tsbp - Coconut oil
• 1/2 tsp - Mustard seeds
• 2 - Shallots, sliced
• 1 sprig of curry leaf
  
• Salt to taste
• Water to cook
  
  

Method:

• In a mixer, make a coarse paste of coconut, chillies, ginger and shallots and keep aside.
• In a meen chatti( traditional earthen pot), put the cleaned and washed fish, turmeric powder, salt, kokum and little water and mix well and put the pot on the flame with a lid on. Cook till the fish is done. As I had medium sized sardines I had cut the fish into 2-3 pieces thus while stirring it, the fish broke into pieces. So very carefully stir it.
• Once the water evaporates, add the ground coconut paste into the fish and cook for 2 more minutes and turn off the gas.
  
• Take another pan and heat coconut oil and splutter mustard seeds and saute in the shallots and curry leaves and pour it onto the dish and mix again.
  
• Serve immediately with rice