Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Fish Kababs


My mum, till a few years back, quite often, made mutton kababs. Now however, she has switched to fish kababs. Since fish is healthier than mutton I consider this a better option.

 
Ingredients:
  • 250 grams or 4 big pieces of fish (pomfret/rahu/katla)
  • 2 tablespoons chana dal or split chick pea with the skin removed. This is the Indian chick pea which is also known in India as Bengal gram. In Bengali it is called chholar dal
  • One tablespoon finely chopped onion
  • One green cardamom
  • One small piece of cinnamon
  • 2 cloves
  • ½ inch piece of ginger
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • Salt and finely chopped green chillies according to taste

Method:
  • Apply salt and turmeric powder to the pieces of fish
  • Boil, debone and mash the fish
  • Boil the chana dal,cloves,cinnamon, cardamom, ginger and garlic together.
  • After boiling remove the cloves,cinnamon and cardamom (squeeze them a bit before removing them so that the flavour is retained in the dal). Grind the dal, ginger and garlic to a paste.
  • Mix the boiled and mashed fish with the dal paste. To this add finely chopped onion, green chillies, salt and a few drops of lemon juice.
  • Mix well and make small balls and flatten the balls into round shaped kababs.
  • Heat very little oil either in a flat non-stick pan or tawa. Place the kababs on the pan. After one side turns brown flip the kababs over to cook the other side.
Serve hot with tomato sauce or ketchup or mint chutney.
You may also like: Fish in Yoghurt Sauce

11 comments:

  1. That sounds very nice, and very like my mother's shammi kababs. Even my parents don't eat mutton very frequently now - in fact, only at Christmas, when we visit, and then my mum always makes shammi kababs!
    Incidentally, my mum used to make fish kababs too, but slightly differently. She would boil the fish and mash it, then mix with mashed potato, fried onion and garlic, a little chopped mint or coriander, and a little powdered garam masala. Then shape into cakes and fry.

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  2. Oh wow..this is very similar to the way I make mutton kebabs.Will try with fish too next time.
    Re to your comment: I also always thought that bhapa ilish is only made with mustard unless I actually saw my MIL making it.

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  3. @Sharmi:Lovely,would love to know how it turns out.

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  4. @dustedoff: Actually my mum adapted the mutton shammi kabab recipe for the fish kababs, the only difference between the two is that the mutton shammi kabab has eggs and my mum decided to do without the eggs.My mum just decided to experiment one day and it was a success. Believe me if the quality of fish is really good then it is very tasty and quite light on the stomach.

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  5. This is my recipe for shammi kebabs:
    Lucknawi Shammi Kebabs

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  6. Prepared the Fish Kabab. It was very tasty. The combination of Fish and Chholar Dall is very good.

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  7. Glad you tried it Ruma. Cholar dal is necessary to bind the kabab otherwise it will break up when you fry it.

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  8. Yummy kebabs Shilpi! I would love to make it with rohu and I know it will be great with a cup of tea coffee or any mulled juice in winter evening!
    Thanks to your Mom and you for sharing this recipe!

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  9. Sounds wonderful, we will certainly try it out. Do we have to boil the fish ? , is it OK if we bake it ? Also, I suppose it is OK to substitute other white fish for pomfret, since it is not that easy to get pomfret here. I personally really love pomfret, either just shallow pan fried, or shallow pan fried with a green chutney in the middle.

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  10. @Samir: Samir I am not too sure about the baking bit but I guess you could give it a try and yes you could substitute it with any other white fish. I too just love pomfret with chutney.

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