Mchuzi wa samaki

Ingredients

• White fish — in steaks1 kg
• Coconut milk600 ml
• Tamarind paste3 tbsp
• Onions2
• Tomatoes3
• Garlic5 clove
• Ginger30 g
• Curry powder2 tbsp
• Hot chilli2
• Coriander40 g
• Vegetable oil60 ml
• 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

   Rub the fish steaks with salt and half the curry powder and leave them fifteen minutes.

   18 min

2. 2

   Fry the fish two minutes a side to a crust and lift it onto a plate.

   12 min

3. 3

   Soften the onion in the same pan and add the garlic and ginger.

   12 min

4. 4

   Add the remaining curry powder and warm it a minute, until the aroma lifts.

   3 min

5. 5

   Add the tomatoes and chilli and reduce them to a thick base without loose liquid.

   12 min

6. 6

   Pour in the coconut milk with the tamarind and warm it without letting it boil.

   8 min

7. 7

   Return the fish to the sauce, let it sit five minutes and serve with rice and coriander.

   8 min

About the dish

The fish is fried before the sauce and goes in at the end. Stewed from the start it breaks into threads and leaves porridge in the bowl.

Tamarind replaces lemon and works differently: it gives an acidity with depth that holds up in coconut milk instead of blowing off.

The coconut milk is brought to a tremble but never a boil. Boiled, it splits and the sauce goes to oily patches.

Worth knowing

• — Use firm fish: tuna, kingfish, cod. Delicate fillets fall apart in even five minutes of sauce.
• — Slake the tamarind paste with water and strain it if it carries fibres. Fibres in the sauce feel unpleasant.
• — Bring the sauce to the thickness you want before the fish returns. Reducing it with the fish means overcooking the fish.

Nutrition

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

Calories

520 kcal

Protein

44 g

Fat

30 g

Carbs

18 g

More from Tanzania

• Zanzibar pilau — Rice with beef on the island's spices: clove, cardamom, cinnamon and black pepper, and no turmeric at all.
• Ndizi na nyama — Green bananas stewed with beef in coconut milk. A Chagga dish from the slopes of Kilimanjaro.
• Vitumbua — Rice cakes on coconut milk, cooked in a pan of hemispherical wells.