The Indian subcontinent · Volume 18, The Ilish, the Chhena and a Border the Kitchen Never Kept
Shorshe ilish
The whole delta
Illustration
- Time
- 40 minutes
- Researched
- Researched from 168 sources in the brief
Hilsa, ilish in Bengali, pieces marinated and simmered in a paste of black and white mustard seed, ground wet with green chilli and salt to keep it from turning bitter, finished in mustard oil. This is the dish every Ghoti and Bangal household considers its own, cooked with real household variation in the ratio of black to white mustard and in the level of chilli heat, Bangladesh's own hand running generally hotter. Hilsa is anadromous, migrating from the Bay of Bengal up the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna system to spawn, and Bangladesh, which produces roughly seventy per cent of the world's hilsa catch and holds Geographical Indication recognition for it since 2017, declared it the national fish in 1972 for reasons no official or historical document actually explains, a detail Prothom Alo's own reporting states plainly rather than papering over.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 40 minutes.
Ingredients
- 4 pieces hilsa (ilish), on the bone, gada and peti cuts if obtainable
- 2 tbsp mustard seed (black and white mixed)
- 1 small onion
- 3 green chillies, plus 1 extra for the marinade
- 1 tsp ginger-garlic paste
- 0.5 tsp turmeric powder
- 0.5 tsp chilli powder
- 4 tbsp mustard oil
- to taste salt
Method
- Scale the hilsa against the direction of the tail, rinse once, then cut into pieces and wash only twice more, in a little water with a squeeze of lemon and a pinch of salt (Rung 5).
- Marinate the pieces briefly with the ginger-garlic paste, salt, chilli powder, turmeric and the extra green chilli.
- Blend the mustard seed with the onion, the remaining green chillies and half a teaspoon of salt to a smooth paste (Rung 2), grinding wet and using it within the hour.
- Heat the mustard oil, add the mustard paste along with the remaining ginger-garlic paste, turmeric, chilli powder and salt, and cook, stirring, 3 to 4 minutes, until the raw smell lifts.
- Add the hilsa pieces and simmer gently until just cooked through, the fish's own fat visibly enriching the sauce. Serve with plain rice.
What a modern chef changes
The paste judged by smell, the fish by touch
Rungs 2 and 5
Method
- Grind the mustard paste to order, in a high-power blender, immediately before cooking, never the night before, so the allyl isothiocyanate it carries has not had time to degrade.
- Simmer, do not boil, so the fish's own rendered fat stays emulsified into the sauce rather than separating out.
- Rannaghor's own move, a deconstruction rather than a rebuild: serve the mustard element separately, as an aerated paste or foam spooned over just before the table, so the diner meets the mustard's aroma at its freshest possible moment, in the same spirit as its own reported "deconstructed shorshe ilish" course, without claiming to reproduce that dish's exact method, which this chapter has not seen written down.