When my mother was still a toddler, her father built a small cottage facing the Arabian Sea in a sleepy little town called Murud. This is the house where my mom and her seven siblings grew up, and where I, as a kid, spent most of my summer holidays. Starting the morning with a dip in the ocean, gouging the creamy flesh from green coconuts for breakfast, feasting on fried fish and spicy shrimp curry for lunch, followed by a long siesta under the areca nut palms in the backyard and finally ending the day watching the sun set behind the Kasa sea fort in a vibrant and generous spread of pastels. Such wonderful memories.
My mom tells me that during the long monsoon months when the fisherman stayed home, and the village market was too wet to open, their staple diet was rice, roasted dried bombil and beans cooked in a creamy coconut curry. The bombil or bombay duck is a type of lizard fish that is found in abundance along the western coast of India. It’s a slimy, ugly fish, which when fried just right has a crispy on the outside, jelly on the inside, texture that is to die for and when dried has a stench that could actually kill you. The locally grown rice, ambeymore, is short grained and sticky and has an aroma reminiscent of mango blossoms. The beans, also grown locally, having a slightly bitter taste, are called pawtey when fresh and birdya or bilda when dried.
During her last trip to India my mother visited Murud and picked up a few pounds of bilda to bring back to Chicago, and yesterday we finally had time to cook the dish. The beans need to be soaked for two days and once they start sprouting, the brown skin cover is peeled off, a long and tedious yet strangely satisfying endeavor. The next step is to finely dice an onion, add a tea spoon of oil, a sprinkling of salt and turmeric and crush the mixture with your hands. In most Indian cooking, onions are fried in oil, and once browned the spices are added to create the curry base. This technique for cooking bilda, which my mom called kalousney, involves no frying or roasting. Once crushed the mixture is added to a pot along with the beans, some coriander and cayenne powder, and half a cup of water. When the water starts drying up in about five to ten minutes, two cups of coconut milk need to be added and the curry should be left simmering on low heat for about thirty minutes. That’s it. Simple. Healthy. Delicious.
Although we do have bombils in our freezer below, triple wrapped in zip lock bags, I didn’t have the courage to roast them in the house, so we substituted it with a tamarind and tomato infused shrimp curry chutney, which really needs a write up of its own.
The meal was amazing and brought back a flood of memories. The crashing ocean waves were missing as was the gentle sea breeze, the rustling of the palms and raucous banter of my uncles and aunts.
Alexa, play ocean sounds and setup a Zoom meeting with the Peshimam family.