- Prep Time:
20 Min - Cook Time:
15 Min
- Difficulty:
easy
- Serves:
6
Fried Fish with Recheado Masala
Description
Recheado is a very aromatic, flavorful and quite hot Goan masala that can be used for marinating, stuffing and frying any kind of seafood. Recheado means "stuffed" in Portuguese and if you order it in Goa what you normally get is a whole fish that was cut lengthwise, stuffed with plenty of this masala and fried. Every Goan family will probably have their own recipe for it, but after some research I come up with this masala that we loved and thought that it tasted pretty authentic. We used mackerel, but if you cannot get it, red snapper would also be great with it or any kind of meaty white fish. By the way, it is excellent with shrimp and crab! You can make more of this masala in advance, keep it in a container in the fridge for a few months and use it when you need it. This amount will be enough for 10-12 small mackerels.
add to shopping list Ingredients
Mackerels, red snapper or other white fish
12 dried red chili peppers (e.g. Kashmiri, Chile de Arbol )
20 black pepper corns
1 teaspoon coriander powder
1 teaspoon cumin seeds or 1/2 teaspoon of cumin powder
12 garlic cloves, peeled
1/2 teaspoon Turmeric powder
1 teaspoon white sugar
3-4 tablespoons white vinegar
small ball of dried tamarind or juice of one lime
1 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
Preparation
Soak dried chili peppers in a little bit of water. I recommend using Kashmiri chili peppers, which are milder and give lovely red color, if you can get them.
If you have dried tamarind, also soak it in a little bit of water for about 5 minutes and then squeeze out the juices and pulp, discard the skin. If you don't have tamarind, just used fresh lime/lemon juice.
First put red chili peppers and vinegar into a blender and blend it till you get a smooth paste.
Next, add garlic cloves, pepper corns, turmeric, coriander, cumin powders, sugar, salt and tamarid/lime juice and blend it all until you get a fine paste. That's it, you have recheado masala ready. You can keep it in a container in the fridge.
Clean the fish and make a few shallow cuts on them. Stuff the fish with some of the masala as well as rub it on the outside. Let it marinate for about 15 minutes.
Heat some oil in a pan and fry the fish on both sides till it's done. The time will depend on the size of the fish, our mackerels needed 5 minutes per side. You might want to cover the pan as the hot oil tends to splatter.
Enjoy!
