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Fish Curry, Goa
Cut head off a fresh striped bass of three pounds, split in two through back, remove spinal bone and skin from the filets, cut meat in twelve even pieces and keep on a plate. Place bones, head and skin in a saucepan with a quart water, two teaspoons salt and three saltspoons pepper, then boil thirty minutes. Finely slice a small carrot, a small onion, half a green pepper, one medium apple, one ripe tomato and one bean garlic; place these in a saucepan with a tablespoon melted butter, then add one bay leaf, a sprig thyme and half teaspoon fresh or dried chopped mint; gently brown eight minutes, add two tablespoons flour; thoroughly mix one minute. Strain the fish broth into this pan, add a good teaspoon curry powder, a teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, a saltspoon grated nutmeg and rind of quarter of a lemon. Mix well and slowly boil thirty minutes. Press through a strainer into another saucepan, add the fish with two tablespoons fresh cocoanut, gently mix, boil twenty-five minutes. Dress on a hot dish, arrange a boiled rice around the fish and serve.
A hotel-kitchen curry built on a fish fumet and a flour-thickened sauce rather than a Goan masala. It works, but two of its measurements and one of its timings need attention.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Three saltspoons pepper in the broth is about 3/4 teaspoon; the nutmeg is a quarter teaspoon.
- Bean of garlicOne clove, not one head. The phrasing appears to follow the French gousse (d'ail), a word that covers both a pod and a clove.
- CocoanutFreshly grated coconut meat. Unsweetened desiccated coconut is the closest pantry substitute; sweetened flake will throw the sauce off balance. Two tablespoons is a seasoning, not a body — do not reach for canned coconut milk expecting the same result.
- The fish timing is the hingeTwenty-five minutes of boiling will shred three pounds of bass into cotton. Bring the strained sauce to a bare simmer, slide the twelve pieces in, and give them 8 to 10 minutes until just opaque at the centre. The coconut can go in at the same time.
- Strain, then don't boil hardThe instruction to press the vegetable sauce through a strainer is what makes this dish; it produces a smooth, apple-sweetened gravy. Once the fish is in, keep the heat at a bare simmer -- hard boiling will break up the fish and thin the sauce.
- Curry powderA "good teaspoon" of period curry powder was generally milder and more turmeric-forward than many blends sold today. Taste the sauce before straining and add more if your blend is gentle; a pinch of cayenne would bring it nearer Goan heat.
- Fish choiceWild striped bass is restricted in some regions and expensive elsewhere. Any firm white fish that holds in pieces works — black sea bass, grouper, snapper, monkfish. Buy it whole if you want the head and frame for the 30-minute broth, or use a quart of light fish stock.
- YieldTwelve pieces of fish with rice serves four generously as a main course.
Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906) gathered several thousand recipes under national headings, and its "Goa" label is a Delmonico-era gesture toward a place the author's readers knew mainly as a Portuguese possession on India's south-western coast. Goan fish curry proper is built on a wet-ground paste of chilli, coriander, turmeric and tamarind or kokum, loosened with coconut milk and finished with no thickener at all; what is set out here is a French hotel curry — a mirepoix browned in butter, two tablespoons of flour, a fish fumet from the bones, Worcestershire sauce, lemon rind and a spoonful of commercial curry powder, all pressed through a strainer in the manner of a velouté. The apple and the grated coconut are the kind of shorthand for "Indian" that recurs through Victorian and Edwardian Anglo-French cookery. Read it less as a record of Goan cooking than as evidence of how a New York kitchen at the turn of the century translated the world's flavours into its own grammar of stock, roux and sieve.