Meen Kizhi / Fish Kizhi

Meen Kizhi / Fish Kizhi is a Malabar special spicy dish. This is a dry side dish and we steam cook the fish in plantain leaf along with other ingredients. 

We got a chance to try this dish in a food fest, but didn't get the recipe from there.. :( After an elaborated search, I got a recipe of Meen Kizhi, but that doesn't contain coconut. The one we had was having coconut, small onion and all... So I modified the recipe in my own way to get the same taste of that we had.... Luckily, that was a great success.... Sharing with you the Meen Kizhi recipe that I modified and tried.... :)

Ingredients

• Fish (soft fleshed, preferably bone-less) - 1/2 kg
• Lemon Juice - 1 tbsp
• Tamarind - 1 Gooseberry size (here we are using the tamarind, which we use in sambar and dry coconut chutney)
• Small Onion /Shallots (finely chopped)  - 1 cup
• Grated Coconut - 1 cup
• Garlic - 2 pod (chopped)
• Ginger (chopped) - 1 tbsp
• Green Chilli - 2-3 nos: (chopped)
• Crushed Pepper - 1 tbsp
• Crushed Red Chilli - 2 tbsp
• Coconut Oil - 3 tbsp
• Mustard - 1/2 tsp
• Salt - as required
• Curry Leaves - as required (chopped)
• Plantain Leaf

Preparation Method

1. Cut fish into average size cubes, wash clean and marinate with lemon juice, crushed pepper and salt and keep aside for 10-15 mins:
2. Put the tamarind in 1/2 cup hot water and keep aside. 
3. Heat plantain leaf directly over the flame and keep aside.
4. In a pan, preferably mud pan, bring oil to heat and splutter mustard seeds.
5. Add chopped onion, ginger, garlic, green chilli, curry leaves and saute in low-medium flame till onion color turns to light brown.
6. Add coconut and crushed chilli and saute for 2 mins:
7. Add tamarind juice and mix well.
8. Add fish, mix well, adjust salt and cook for 2-3 mins: keeping the lid open.
9. Divide the fish masala into two parts and keep each part in two different plantain leaves.
10. Fold the plantain leaf from all sides, so that the fish will be in the middle and will look like a kizhi (packet) and tight the top with a small piece of plantain leaf.
11. Steam cook the fish packets for about 15-20 mins:
12. Meen Kizhi / Fish Kizhi will taste so good with rice, appam, pathiri etc: