Garudhiya

Ingredients

• Fresh tuna — in large pieces800 g
• Curry leaves10
• Pandan leaf1
• Red onion — to serve2
• Chillies4
• Limes3
• 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

   Cut the tuna into large pieces and rinse them under cold water.

   10 min

2. 2

   Cover with a litre and a half of cold water, salt it and bring it up.

   10 min

3. 3

   Skim for the first five minutes; the clarity of the broth depends on it.

   6 min

4. 4

   Add the curry leaves and pandan and cook twenty minutes on the lowest heat.

   22 min

5. 5

   Remove the leaves, check the salt and take it off the heat.

   4 min

6. 6

   Serve with rice, sliced onion, chilli and lime, each person adding them to their own bowl.

   8 min

About the dish

Only fish, water and salt go into the pot. No onion, no spices, no vegetables — the flavour has to be fish, and Maldivians treat additions as spoiling it.

The broth is never boiled hard and the scum is lifted off in the first five minutes. A cloudy garudhiya reads as inexperience here.

Everything that gives it flavour is added at the bowl: lime, chilli, onion, curry leaves. Each person builds their own, and that is part of the serving.

Worth knowing

• — The fish has to be very fresh. Garudhiya masks nothing, and any hint of staleness is immediately audible.
• — Never let it boil hard. It dries the tuna to fibres and clouds the broth.
• — Leftover broth is reduced to a thick black paste called rihaakuru — a Maldivian condiment that keeps for months.

Nutrition

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

Calories

420 kcal

Protein

44 g

Fat

6 g

Carbs

46 g

More from Maldives

• Mas huni — Tuna worked with coconut, onion and lime, with hot roshi flatbread. The Maldivian breakfast.