Mr Kerala is back!!

After leaving us yet again for a number of weeks, this time to attend his daughter’s wedding in India, Dili’s finest Indian cook, Mr Kerala*, is back in town.  We can all breathe a sigh of relief.  Happily, he has brought his wife with him, so the one-man-show now has an extra pair of hands to help the deliciousness get to the table quicker.

After ordering our banana lassies and scouring the menu, we asked Mr K (a little tentatively) whether he had fish tonight.  Sometimes he answers this question by telling us that we should always ring him in advance if we want his special fish curry with the special recipe all the way from his village in Kerala, but tonight he replied with a simple: Yes!!!!

So, fish curry it was, accompanied by palak paneer and brinjola (eggplant).  We also ordered the flaky, crispy parathas (fried flatbreads).  Wade went with the plain, but tonight I had a curiosity about the egg version.  I also had a hankering to relive my Bangladeshi road trip breakfasts, which involved a green chilli-spiced omelette rolled up in a paratha.  A good, greasy hangover cure.   Mr K’s egg paratha was scrambled eggs folded inside the bread, and although it wasn’t quite the same as the Bangladeshi version, it was equally as tasty.

Curries from left to right: Brinjola, fish curry, palak paneer.  Egg paratha in foreground, plain at the back.

The fish curry is spicy and tomatoey, with just a hint of coconut milk, excellent for soaking into the rice/bread.  The fish itself is of the meaty variety – I think perhaps a kingfish – cut across the bone, but the taste is so good the bones don’t matter.  This was the star of the show. 

The brinjola is a slightly drier style curry, but has a high oil content, giving it some moisture, and lots of silky onions. The flavour is a little bit smoky. 

The palak paneer, while still passing as a good curry, could have been of a smoother consistency.  In most of the other palak paneers I’ve had, the flavours from the onion, curry paste and spinach are blended together to make one beautiful mass of edible green moss, dotted with spongy cubes of cheese.  Mr K’s onions were fully visible amongst the not-quite broken down spinach leaves, resulting in a somewhat disjointed flavour. His cheese was just right.

It’s good to have you back, Mr K.