Locomotoring

This recipe of Macher Mudi Ghonto is my thamma’s recipe, my paternal grandmother’s, passed down to my mom. Singaporean’s make curried fish heads. Japanese use fish cheeks. This preparation can be best described as a fish head pulao, except the shape of the fish head is not preserved while cooking. It isn’t that we are queasy watching the fish head looking back at us. After all, we do have the other famous Bengali preparation “macher matha diye moong daal” moong lentil with fish head, where one can look deeply into fish eyes and suck its brains out with great gusto.

My thamma was an immigrant, the kind that the Brits created by partitioning Bengal into east and west. She was a young mother when she left her home in Bangladesh to arrive in Kolkata. Like many immigrants from those days, they had left their home with nothing to rebuild from scratch. Her family, my dad and his siblings, grew up in cramped quarters in Kolkata. In today’s world, we have become so sedentary that we need constant reminders to get off our ass to get some movement in. I remember her as one who moved continuously. She was either drawing water from the communal tap or cooking in her 30 sq ft kitchen or feeding the extended family or washing or cleaning. When she sat down, it would be to pray and meditate. I remember her as deeply religious, she would constantly chant prayers while working and when possible, run her fingers through her prayer beads. On one rare occasion, I remember her drawing an intricate Madhubani sketch on a child’s slate with chalk. She had an amazing hand and patience for fine details. In another world, she might have made a good surgeon.

The recipe is best made with large fish heads like rohu, the ones that have relatively large brains. The fish brain is 60% fat and that fat is essential for this dish. Here is the basic outline of how to prepare this dish. Clean the fish head well (you can take out the gills if you want) and coat them in salt and turmeric. For two generous servings, I would recommend 2 large or 3 medium fish heads. To a wok, add 4-6 Tbs of mustard oil and heat to the smoking point. Gently lower the fish heads in the hot oil and fry, stirring occasionally. They will eventually crisp up and the fat in the brain will melt into the oil. If they aren’t disintegrating readily, nudge them a little so they do. In Bengali, there is a word called “kurkure”, it denotes crumbly and crisp at the same time. That is the end point of your fish heads. Once reached, take them out, carefully draining them to leave the oil behind in the wok. To the oil, add two bay leaves, and a couple of small potatoes. In Bengal, potatoes are relatively small, no more than 1-1.5 inches in diameter, and they only need to be halved for this preparation. If they are new potatoes, you can leave the skin on, but otherwise take the skin off. Once the potatoes are lightly fried, set them aside and add a medium sized chopped onion. In Bengal, the onions are also relatively small, and mom uses a couple. Once onions are fried, add 2 tsps of ginger-garlic paste. Once the paste is cooked, add 1/4 cup of cleaned and well drained white rice, preferably Gobind bhog. In a pinch, parboiled basmati would do – the parboiled versions of rice maintain their shape in pulao/biryani. Fry the rice lightly, like you would for pulao, until they are translucent. Then add a cup of water and salt to taste. Continue cooking until the rice and potatoes absorb most of the water and are almost cooked. Now add the cooked fish heads and mix. Use the opportunity to adjust for salt. Switch off heat, add 1-2 tsp of ghee and a tsp of ground warming spices. I like to toast my warming spices whole, then grind them and then fry them lightly in the ghee before adding to the dish. Bengali warming spices contain black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and green cardamom. They have both water and fat soluble flavor components. My mom uses a mortar and pestle both for ginger-garlic paste as well as for the warming spice paste. Adding the fish at the very end retains the “kurkure” texture of the fish heads. Eat as part of a multi-course meal.

Nowadays, eating head to tail has become fashionable in the West. Back in the days, when most Bengali families farmed and fished, they knew the effort involved and precious little was ever wasted. I don’t know how commonly Mudi Ghonto is made in modern Bengali kitchens. I wouldn’t even know if there are other recipes. I have known and loved only one way of eating Mudi Ghonto. Several of my thamma’s dishes involve cooking and eating what some would throw away, such as peels of vegetables. They would often end up in a “bata” or a paste where flavor bombs like coconut or mustard would elevate the peels to a delicacy. Nutritional scientists would have been proud of my thamma. This particular dish has all the flavors of a fatty fish. It is also unapologetically fish flavored – the long frying concentrates the flavors. The rice and potatoes, cooked to perfection with warming spices and ghee, has the finesse of a fine pulao or biryani. It isn’t finger food, but is is best eaten with one’s fingers – one has to make sure that all the crumbly bones are well chewed and all the harder ones are spat out, delicately and with proper etiquette. I like to mash a piece of potato into the rice so it becomes easier to make rice balls and consequently become easier to eat with fingers.

Like PG Wodehouse character, Wooster, Bengali’s believe that fish is food for the brain. When it comes to fish brain, it is double the benefit due to high amounts of omega-3. Although this dish is a favorite of mine, I have cooked this only once. I am not sure how often will I cook this in my life. After the Alaska trip in 2023, we gave up eating farmed fish and sourcing fish has become complicated. I rarely cook anything other than an occasional trout. I find myself relying on tinned sardines from Portugal. For now, my mom makes Mudi Ghonto at least once when I visit her.