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Bengali · Main

Shorshe Ilish

  • Intermediate
  • 30 min
  • roughly 2 of 4 for cost

gently hot · earthy · silky Leads with a warm current of chile, an earthy, grounding base, melting away silken.

Ingredients

  • 700g ilish (hilsa) steaks, cut 2cm thick, 6 pieces
  • 45g black mustard seeds (kalo shorshe)
  • 15g yellow mustard seeds
  • 6 kancha lonka (green chillies), 2 kept whole
  • 1 tsp salt, for the grinding jar
  • 90ml cold-pressed mustard oil
  • 1.5 tsp turmeric
  • 1.5 tsp salt
  • 150ml water

The skills inside

Tempering a custardFrying the paste until the oil splitsStraining & passing through a sieve

The words inside

Mustard Seeds: Yellow, Brown & Black

Allergen screen

Found: mustard

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Rub the steaks with 1 tsp turmeric and 1 tsp salt and leave 15 minutes, until water beads stand on the cut faces and the flesh firms to the touch. 15 min
  2. Soak both mustards in warm water 20 minutes, drain, then grind with 4 green chillies, 1 tsp salt and 3 tbsp cold water in short pulses, stopping the moment the paste smells sharp and clean rather than dull. Push it through a sieve and discard the husk. 20 min
  3. Heat 75ml mustard oil in a kadai until the raw pungency flattens and a thin white wisp lifts off the surface, then take the pan off the flame for 30 seconds.
  4. Return it to a low flame, pour in the sieved paste with the water, remaining turmeric and salt, and cook 4 minutes until it thickens to a loose custard and oil beads yellow around the rim. Never let it gallop. 4 min
  5. Slide the fish in one layer, spoon gravy over each piece, cover and cook 7 minutes until the flesh parts from the backbone under a fork. Trail the last 15ml raw mustard oil and the whole chillies over, cover, and rest 5 minutes off the heat. 7 min

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Tempering a custard 59 recipes

  • The hot liquid went into the eggs a little at a time with constant whisking, and only then did everything go back to the pot.
  • The heat under it stayed gentle throughout and it was never allowed to boil.
  • Stirred continuously and right into the corners of the pan, where it thickens first and sets unnoticed.
  • Judged by behaviour: it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon and hold a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
  • Taken off before it looks finished, and strained. Residual heat carries it the rest of the way, and a custard held on the heat until it looks right arrives past right.

Where it goes wrong The hot liquid went in too fast, or the pot went back over full heat to save time. The yolks set into threads before they could thicken smoothly, and a scrambled custard does not come back; straining hides a little of it and nothing hides the rest.

Frying the paste until the oil splits 95 recipes

  • It is being fried, not simmered: the paste is in fat over live heat and moving, holding a steady sizzle throughout rather than bubbling as a wet mass.
  • The colour has deepened and darkened from raw to cooked, and the volume has visibly reduced and tightened.
  • The split, the signal the whole technique is named for, is unmistakable when it comes: clear fat separates out and pools at the edges and on the surface, and the paste pulls away from the pan floor in one mass.
  • The smell has turned from sharp and raw to round and fragrant, with no raw bite left from any of the aromatics that went into it.
  • Nothing has caught: no black specks through the paste, no bitterness, and a pan floor that is browned but not burnt.

Where it goes wrong It was taken off as soon as it smelled good, before the fat separated; the raw edge of the aromatics is still in it, and the finished dish tastes thin and sharp no matter how long it simmers afterwards.

At the Table

The Pour
Vermentino or Sauvignon Blanc
Also Right
Albariño
From the Taps
Witbier
Zero-Proof
Sparkling water with citrus

Lean fish, bright acid, done: coastal whites built beside the same boats; the fresher the fish, the leaner the pour.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Shorshe Ilish Technique: Tempering a custardThe skill inside this recipe The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Bengali kitchen