Wednesday, February 4, 2009

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

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi dear ..
Welcome back ..so hope u had a great time thr in kerala like me ..:)
meen peera looks just great .Nice snap ...me too posted this item sometime back ...love
veena

lubnakarim06 said...

Happy to se you back dear. Recipe rocks.

Tina said...

Hai dear...endha oru manaporutham....welcome bak....

lubnakarim06 said...

R u from Bangalore?

Varsha Vipins said...

Hey dr..long since I saw u..vaccation?glad that u r back..:)n the meen peera is my fav..miss mom making it..:(
pls trail back for an award..:)

Lubna Karim said...

Can i get your mail id please?

Anonymous said...

Τhankѕ very niсе blog!

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