Thalassery Style Sardine Fry
Thalassery style sardine fry involves slow-cooking the fish by frying in a base of grated coconut, rice flour, dry chillies, ginger, and curry leaves.
Servings: 6 people
Ingredients
- 400 grams sardines approx 15 medium sized
- 7 dry kashmiri chillies
- 7 shallots medium sized
- 2 green chillies medium sized
- 1 inch ginger piece
- 1/2 cup grated coconut
- 1/4 cup rice flour
- 6-7 curry leaves
- salt as required
- coconut oil for frying
- coconut milk optional
Instructions
- Soak the Kashmiri chillies in lukewarm water for 10 minutes.
- Drain the water and keep it aside.
- Pulse the Kashmiri chillies in a blender.
- Add the green chillies, shallots, ginger, curry leaves, salt, and blitz again.
- Now add the grated coconut, and rice flour, and grind to a thick paste.
- You can add water, that was kept aside, as required while grinding with the grated coconut.
- Add more salt if required
- This is our marinade and it also forms the fish fry base.
- Clean and score the sardines.
- If the marinade is too thick, add some water (or coconut milk for an even better result).
- Coat the sardines with the marinade.
- Heat some coconut oil in a pan. A cast iron pan works well.
- There should be enough oil to cover half the height of sardines when placed.
- Once the oil is hot, reduce to a low flame. We don't want the fish to be crispy fried.
- Gently place the sardines. You will have to fry them in batches (unless you have a big pan).
- Add some extra marinade also in the gaps between the sardines in the pan.
- Slow fry for 5 minutes. Turn over the sardines and fry the other side as well.
- Take them out of the pan using a slotted spoon and transfer to a serving plate.
- You can use paper towels to soak up some of the extra oil.
- Fry the marinade in the pan for a couple more minutes and extract them too.
- Repeat for the remaining sardines.
- If there is any marinade remaining, fry that too in the pan and add it to the top of the fried sardines.
- Serve hot. Tastes great with rice and curry.