FISH AMBOTIK (THALI)
(There’s a Prawn Ambotik recipe on her website, but quantities are different. I’d be glad to give book proportions if someone wants them.)
I had only eaten a Konkani version of Ambotik, but I encountered the Goan version at a Goan HO Group Dinner a few months ago and loved it because it reminded me so much of Balchao, which I adore.
The sauce on this prep is tangy in the best way. Sweet mostly from onions, with some sugar added to balance, sour from tomatoes and tamarind.
It’s a simple dish – make a spice paste, sauté onions, add ginger-garlic paste, pureed tomatoes, tomato paste, and the spice paste, and let it all come together. Add the fish and let it simmer enough to cook.
My changes:
- Doubled the garlic
- Pureed ginger, garlic, and tomatoes together
- Didn’t make the spice paste – used harissa and added powdered spices and more chilli powder to taste (as I often do for this kind of dish)
- Jaggery instead of sugar
- Tamarind powder instead of paste, added a little at a time
- Simmered the sauce for about 20 mins (till the oil separated and flavors completely melded) before adding the fish
This was delicious, and close in flavor to what we ate at the Goan place (but I used a lot less oil than the chef there, haha). Good with chapatis, and lovely with rice.
Next time I would marinate the fish in some of the spice paste. This benefits from a sturdy or fatty fish - in Goa it’s often shark, in Mumbai mackerel, at the restaurant it was monkfish – I used salmon.
(Circling back to the other version of Ambotik I mentioned – it was pretty different, no or little tomato, not sweet, fenugreek gave it a backnote, and the sour likely came from kokum rather than tamarind if I was guessing. It was also delicious, just different. )
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