Shorshe ilish

Ingredients

• Hilsa or herring — in steaks800 g
• Mustard seeds — yellow and black in equal parts60 g
• Green chillies6
• Turmeric2 tsp
• Mustard oil80 ml
• Nigella seeds1 tsp
• Rice — to serve400 g
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Soak the mustard seeds in warm water for twenty minutes.

   22 min

2. 2

   Grind them with two chillies, a pinch of salt and a little water into a smooth paste.

   10 min

3. 3

   Rub the fish steaks with turmeric and salt and leave them ten minutes.

   12 min

4. 4

   Heat the mustard oil until it smokes, take it off and let it cool a minute; raw mustard oil is acrid.

   5 min

5. 5

   Add the nigella, pour in the mustard paste let down with half a cup of water, and cook three minutes.

   5 min

6. 6

   Lay the fish in a single layer, add the remaining chillies whole, cover and stew twelve minutes.

   14 min

7. 7

   Finish with a spoon of raw mustard oil, take it off the heat and serve with rice.

   4 min

About the dish

The mustard seeds are ground with water and a pinch of salt. The salt is not for flavour: without it the paste turns genuinely bitter and the whole sauce is spoiled.

The fish is not fried but stewed under a lid in the sauce. Hilsa is delicate and breaks up in a pan; in a covered pot it holds together and stays moist.

Hilsa has a great many fine bones. Bengalis eat it slowly and in silence — that is an accepted part of the process, and the fish is not to be rushed.

Worth knowing

• — The mustard paste must not boil long. After five minutes on the heat it turns sharply bitter, and nothing corrects that.
• — Do not turn the fish. Rock the pan once if you must, and no more — hilsa breaks at any touch of a spatula.
• — Any oily, firm-fleshed fish will stand in: herring, mackerel, whitefish. Lean cod is lost in this sauce.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

560 kcal

Protein

38 g

Fat

30 g

Carbs

34 g

More from Bangladesh

• Bhuna khichuri — Rice and lentils fried before the water goes in. Bengali food for a rainy day.