Loitya/ lotey maacher jhuri (Bengali style Bombay Duck mash)

Loitya maach or Bombay Duck is predominantly found in the coastal region of Kerala, Maharashtra and Goa and in the Bay of Bengal coast such as West Bengal, and in Bangladesh. Although the fish variety is the same, we Bengalis cook this fish very differently from the other parts of the Western coast of India. One of my pishemoshais (fufaji or one of those paternal uncles) is originally from Chittagong division of Bangladesh, although his family migrated here long ago; and our family learnt about this delicious recipe from them. My father started trying out the recipes they cook at home and he was successful. That is when we started to eat more of these bangal style food at our home. We are the ghotis, which means the people who have their roots in modern day West Bengal; and anyone with a root in current Bangladesh is termed as bangals. Apparently, there used to be a huge rivalry between these two groups in terms of food (ilish vs chingri or Hilsa vs Jumbo Prawns) and football (East Bengal vs Mohun Bagan). Nowadays, it is more of a mixed culture and we do not really differentiate much. So the ghoti people never used to buy to cook what the bangals did earlier, like around 50-60 years ago. But if you see, I love both the styles of cooking and cannot really live solely on only the ghoti food even after having 100% ghoti blood in me. There are few dedicated restaurants in Kolkata for the Dhaka style food such as Kasturi (the oldest and the best of the lot) in New Market Area. I swear by their food absolutely. You get shutki maach (dry fish recipes) also in Kasturi and those are lip-smacking totally!

The idea over here is to buy the fish from the market the very day you want to cook it. It is always best if consumed fresh. Also make sure you tell the fish seller to halve the fish and not make small chunks. It is always easy to cook it that way (will tell you why in the recipe!). Next is that you should buy a kilo of the fish for a family of three to suffice for a meal. You need to invest a lot of time in cooking this dish and I can guarantee you that your hand will pain for a day for the effort you put in the kitchen. 😄 Fact is that you will forget the pain once you eat this mash with hot white rice.🤤 Last but not the least, please be patient while cooking this, I would suggest do not use your phone while you cook, your lack of attention can be fatal for this recipe. 😉 Will post the recipe now, without much ado! All the best people, try it out and please let me know how it turned out! 😇

Ingredients:

Loitya maach/ Bombay duck - 1 kg, cut into halves and cleaned

Onions - 4 medium sized, sliced

Ginger - 2 inch piece, grated or finely chopped

Garlic - 7-8 cloves, grated or finely chopped

Tomatoes - 2 medium sized, finely chopped

Green chillies - 10-12 pieces, finely chopped (actually this recipe is quite high in heat and that is perhaps the beauty of it; if you cannot consume so much of chillies, then try using at least 7-8 chillies while cooking this)

Salt - as required

Turmeric powder - 1.5 teaspoon

Red chilli powder - 2 teaspoon

Cumin powder - 2 teaspoon

Mustard oil - 4 tablespoons + 1 tablespoons (read more to know why!)

Water - 10-20 ml (do not use more than this quantity)

Procedure:

Heat oil in a deep bottomed pan, and add the sliced onions in it. It will become translucent after a while and then change its color. Then add the ginger and garlic in it and fry till the raw smell goes away. Next, add the tomatoes and green chillies in it, followed by salt, turmeric powder, red chilli powder, cumin powder. Fry the masala well, and add a splash of water if needed. Caution: do not add water in this dish as the fish is full of water, once you add it you will see how much water it releases. Now once the tomato turns mushy and the masala is ready, you need to add those Bombay duck or Loitya maach pieces in it. Give it a thorough mix. Keep the flame on medium. The fish will start to release water in a minute or so. Your main task here is to keep stirring so that the fish does not stick to the pan. You will see slowly the fish is breaking and the bones are separating. The main bone is the spinal cord one, and you have to keep an eye on it, so that you are able to take it out and discard it while the fish is cooking. It is easier to separate the bones if the fish pieces are big rather than cut in small chunks (reason why I mentioned the same in the ingredients)😉. This has to continue for at least 30-40 minutes till you see that the water is drying up and the fish has mixed with the gravy well. The color will change to brown from the initial yellow, and that can serve as an indicator. Be very cautious with the salt in this recipe, because initially you may need to add more salt as it releases a lot of water; but later on when it dries up, the salt content will be too high and it won't be palatable at all. So I suggest you to add salt cautiously and taste test it at a later stage to adjust if needed. At the final stage you will see that the fish has broken down completely and mixed up very well with the prepared masala. Now comes a small twist that I definitely perform whenever I cook this loitya maach dish. Take out the pre-final dish from the pan and keep it aside. Add some more oil in the same pan (now you know why I mentioned oil in 2 parts!!), and let it smoke. Then add the pre-final cooked loitya maach in it and fry on high flame. Keep stirring and scraping the pan to well so that the fish is fried even better in the second and final phase of cooking. This step actually enhances the taste of the dish multiple times and makes it rich and flavourful.😋 Cook it for like 5 minutes or so and now your food is ready to be served! This Bengali style Bombay Duck mash or Loitya/ lotey maacher jhuri should only be paired up with steaming hot plain white rice. Do not eat it with any flavoured rice, that will be unjust for this delicious mash! 😀