FISH (FILLETS) POLLICHATHU pp. 110-111
At lunch, I texted BF - take some fish out of the freezer for dinner, your choice. I’ll figure out what to do with it when I get home. He grabbed a packaged of black cod, because it was at the top of the freezer and we had two of them. I clearly was not going to be able to make miso marinated cod, at least not tonight! And I weirdly wasn’t in the mood for tacos (who even am I? 
). I had read over the fish pollichathu recipe a while ago. It called for whole mackerel, but I had the other ingredients and figured it would all right to adapt. This is a fried, marinated fish recipe which I believe hails from Kerala.
This is another double marinated recipe. Combine lemon juice, ground coriander, turmeric, salt, black pepper, and chile powder. I, not reading the recipe very closely, sprinkled the dry ingredients on the fish fillets, did a double take, and then sprinkled a little citric acid powder over. Then it went into the fridge for about a half hour while I prepped the next marinade. Fry mustard seeds in oil (again it called for yellow and I used black), then cook some onions until golden (I used shallot), followed by fresh ginger, garlic, and green chile. When those have cooked a bit, add tomato and the remaining coriander, turmeric, chile powder, lemon, black pepper, and salt from the marinade you should have made properly, and cook down until it thickens (add water if it gets too thick). Then blend it up and when it has cooled, slather the fish with it. That goes back in the fridge for another 30 minutes.
When it is ready, you have a choice of deep frying your fish or roasting at 350F. I chose neither and shallow fried in my wok. Remove much of the excess marinade; you don’t want it burning in the oil. I forgot to fry my curry leaves first, so I added them near the end and then just fished (ha!) everything out and let it drain on paper towels.
This came together pretty easily on a weeknight, even not entirely paying attention to what I was doing 
It also tastes great! I think this would definitely be good with mackerel. Trout would probably also work, especially if you can get some cleaned, boned out brook trout.
