The Indian subcontinent · Volume 22, The Coconut Coast, the Stone Grinder and the Chettiar’s Spice Road
Fish moilee
Kerala (Syrian Christian)
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 30 minutes
- Researched
- No outside sources linked
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Meen moilee, a mild coconut-milk fish stew, historically a Syrian Christian festive dish, contested in its very name.
The name is genuinely contested: one account traces "moilee" to Tamil molee, "mild," a direct contrast with Kerala's spicier curries; a separate, more commonly repeated claim traces the name and dish to Portuguese-contact colonial fusion cooking. Neither is definitively sourced; this chapter presents both rather than choosing one.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 30 minutes.
Ingredients
- 600g firm white fish, cut into steaks or fillets
- 1 onion, sliced
- 2 tomatoes, sliced
- 1 thumb ginger, julienned
- 2 green chillies, slit
- 2 cups thin coconut milk
- ½ cup thick coconut milk
- ½ tsp turmeric
- A sprig curry leaves
- ½ lime juice of ½ lime
- to taste salt
Method
- Fry the onion, ginger, green chilli and curry leaf in coconut oil until softened but not coloured.
- Add the tomato, turmeric and salt and cook until the tomato breaks down.
- Pour in the thin coconut milk, bring to a bare simmer, and slide in the fish.
- Cook gently 8 to 10 minutes, until the fish is just cooked through; the sauce should never boil hard, or the coconut milk will split.
- Stir in the thick coconut milk and lime juice at the very end, off the heat.
What a modern chef changes
A tempered curry leaf oil poured over at the table, and a poach controlled to the degree
Rung 5, applied to gentleness of heat rather than resting time
Method
- Poach the fish separately in a little of the thin coconut milk at a controlled low temperature, then combine with the rest of the sauce only at the point of serving, for a more precisely cooked piece of fish than simmering it directly in the full pot allows.
- Make a separate curry leaf oil, gently warming curry leaves in coconut oil until they turn glassy, then straining, and finish the dish with a spoonful poured over at the table rather than only tempered into the base.
- Reduce the thick coconut milk on its own until it lightly thickens before folding it in, for a sauce with more body without needing to reduce the whole pot and risk overcooking the fish.