Basic Fish & Potato Curry

Whenever I don't know what to cook and that happens quite frequently, if you have observed!--- I just whip up the most basic Indian curry and throw in either some veggies or peas & paneer (Indian cottage cheese) or chicken. I don't usually cook fish in this basic sauce, but today thought, heck why not? Should taste pretty good, right?

The 4 ingredient Curry Base: Onion+Tomato+Garlic+Ginger

1. I take a medium size onion, 1 juicy beefsteak tomato, a couple to 3 cloves of garlic and some ginger. THAT'S ALL! Run it in the food processor until well processed. 
2. Then I take a pan/pot, put in a few teaspoons of oil (the more the oil, the better the taste--- but of course, we all know that we try to eat healthy now a days!). 
3. Then temper some mustard seeds, cumin seeds, fennel seeds, cardamom, cinnamon (you can skip some of these and use only cumin or only mustard seeds if you want- your choice) and then pour in the curry base. Start stirring it. You gotta be careful because this stuff tends to come to a boil real fast and then tends to splatter all over. The idea is to get all that water out of the base (water from the onion and the tomato) until the end result that is a lovely dark red colored thick paste. This can take upto 20 mins or so.
4. Just as the evaporation is happening, add the desired amount of salt and red chilli powder followed by some of that famous garam masala powder. 
5. The basic North Indian style curry base is ready to be transformed into any saucy curry! 

The Fish:

Today I decided to actually fry the fish a little bit so as to brown up the outer part. Else of late I have just been poaching the fish (remember- the healthy cooking!). So I cut up the fish into bite sized pieces and then marinated in some lemon juice+salt+red chilli powder. A half hour is good enough. Then I took a pan and put in a few teaspoons of oil and then gently added the fish pieces and browned them up. This took only about 4 mins. The main idea was to get the fish to brown up and not fall apart easily when thrown into the curry.

Fish marinating

Partially cooked fish- look at that OIL!

The Final Touch:
 

1. I let the fried fish rest on a couple paper towels to blot off the extra oil. 
2. Meanwhile I added a cup of water into the curry base and brought it to a boil. 
3. Oh, I cooked a couple potatoes as well in the curry. Then I turned off the stove.
4. Finally I added the fish pieces one by one into the beautiful curry. Put the lid on the pot and that's it! DONE! The partially cooked fish cooked up prefect in that hot curry.
5. Before serving, garnished with some fresh green cilantro. 

The delicious fish & potato curry!

I love the versatility of this 4 ingredient curry base. I mean, you can use it to of course make curries (veggie or meat). You can even use this same base for rice pilafs too. Oh, this stuff is so yummy- you can sometimes just use it as a spread or a chutney!

I served this fish & potato curry with some plain streamed rice.I was right--- it did turn out pretty darn good!