Harpers & Queen—March, 2004

Coco de mer

By Padma Lakshmi

For Padma Lakshmi the scents and flavours of Southern Indian cooking are a reminder of schooldays in Madras and visits to her grandmother's farm in Tanjore. With spanking-fresh fish and the ubiquitous coconut, she shows how to create a mean meen moilee.

My grandmother grew up on a coconut farm on the banks of the Kaveri River in Tanjore in southern India. I remember visits to the family farm during school holidays, when we played hide and seek among the coconut palms. We would clamor around the gardener as he climbed the palms, inching quickly upwards like a worm, his bare feet cupped around the trunk. His task was to find the perfect coconut with the most water for each of us. Then, as he hacked holes in the tops of them with his sickle, we would sit down on the steps that led into the river and gorge on them, waist-deep in water, with little fish nibbling on our toes. We were forbidden to go further than the edge of the last step, for the strength of the current could sweep away small children. To demonstrate how, my grandmother would throw a coconut into the river; we would watch in terror as it bobbed swiftly downstream, just like a little head.

My grandmother made endless delicious dishes with coconut; soupy lentils, a wonderful chutney, and peerless bean curry with coconut and mustard seeds. I remember sitting for hours on the cool marble floor of her kitchen, grating coconut for different dishes and chopping vegetables for the evening meal, listening to her family stories.

The coconut is a staple of southern Indian cooking, the ingredient that most distinguishes it from the food of the cooler north. There, cream is often used to add richness to recipes. In the south, coconut provides the creaminess. Nothing is wasted: the water and oil, the pulp and flesh, which is also soaked in water to produce a milk—everything is used.

The other ingredient that takes me straight back to the hot tropical days of my childhood is the tamarind. My school in Madras had a big tamarind tree; as kids we used to climb up it and fill our pockets with the sticky sour fruit, which we would suck on as though they were lollipops. The flesh of the fruit ripens from a pale yellow- green to a dark-brown molasses color, and becomes sticky like a thick jam. Once the skin becomes brown, it dries and cracks off; this is when it is at its most ripe and tangy. Tamarind is used in many gravied lentil dishes. The fruit is soaked in hot water and the resulting pulpy liquid is used as a base to create all sorts of dishes, the most popular of which is a tomato soup called rasam. It is the number-one souring agent used throughout Tamil Nadu. Traveling through Kerala and Tamil Nadu making a food documentary, I got the chance to taste a whole world of non-vegetarian food that was off-limits to me as a child, since I was raised on a strict Brahmin vegetarian diet. It was on this trip that I discovered a favorite dish, a fish recipe called meen moilee. Legend has it that, during colonial times, an English woman named Moilee (probably a mispronunciation of Molly) loved Indian food but had trouble digesting the spices. She thus added coconut milk to a dry fish sauté, and the dish meen (meaning fish) moilee was born. It soon grew to be a favorite of Indian and English palates alike.

Keralan Brahmins often make seafood an exception to the traditional lacto vegetarian diet, the joke being that fish are just vegetables that swim.

Meen moilee

4 5oz fillets of white fish (sea-bass, red snapper and tilapia are all fine), cut into chunks
Juice of 1 lime
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
Canola or vegetable oil for sauteeing
3 medium cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
1 cup shallots or South Indian rosy onions, sliced in thin crescents
1 tbsp fresh minced ginger
2 hot green Thai chillies, sliced lengthways with stems removed but seeds intact
12 fresh green curry leaves
1/2 tsp sambar powder (available in Asian markets)
12oz can unsweetened coconut milk
1 cup water
1 cup plum tomatoes,cut into rough (big) chunks
Salt
1/2 cup fresh coriander leaves, chopped

In a bowl, marinate the fish chunks in lime juice and turmeric, coating all sides evenly. Set aside for half an hour.

In a large wok, heat 2 tbsp of canola or vegetable oil over a medium heat. When the oil shimmers, add the garlic and stir. Then, after one minute, add the shallots, ginger, green chillies and half the curry leaves without any stems. Add the sambar powder and stir well. Saute this for four to five minutes until the shallots become glassy. Turn the heat down to medium-low.

Dilute half the coconut milk with a cup of water and add to the wok. Stir well and cook for three minutes. Now add the rest of the coconut milk and let this boil slowly for eight to 10 minutes. Add the fish chunks and all the lime juice to the wok. After one minute, add the tomato chunks and the rest of the curry leaves. Add salt to taste.

Cook for a further five minutes, or until the fish is cooked through. Add the coriander, stir and remove from the heat immediately. Serve with plain rice.