R024Meen Vevichathu
Kudampuli fish curry, the Kottayam Syrian Christian way
R026
Mathi Curry
Sardine curry with kudampuli — the cheapest good fish in Kerala
Photograph: Adobe Stock · representative of the dish
Plan ahead: plus 4 hours resting — strongly recommended.
The re-engineeringAlmost nothing, and that is the point. A traditional mathi curry is already a low-oil dish; this version cuts the coconut oil from about 30 g to 12 g and gets the difference back from the sardine's own fat, which renders into the gravy.
Mathi is the fish this book would choose if it could only keep one. At 17.91 g of protein and roughly 614 mg of EPA plus DHA per 100 g, it out-delivers every prestige fish in Kerala on omega-3 per rupee by an order of magnitude, and when the shoals come in off Kollam and Alappuzha it is sold from baskets at a price that embarrasses the market. It is also strong, oily and unapologetic, which is why it needs kudampuli rather than coconut milk.
Before you start: Clean the sardines before anything else — heads off, gut removed, the black line inside the cavity scraped out with a thumbnail and rinsed. That black line is what makes a sardine curry bitter and nothing later removes it. Soak the kudampuli while you work.
Mathi Curry
Active 25 minutes Total 45 minutes
Scale
4 servings
Ingredients — tap to tick off
- ✓3 pieces kudampuli (about 8 g), rinsed and soaked in 60 ml warm water
- ✓500 g (1 lb 2 oz) cleaned sardines, from about 700 g whole — 8 to 10 medium fish
- ✓12 g (2½ tsp) coconut oil, divided: 7 g and 5 g
- ✓100 g (about 10) shallots, thinly sliced
- ✓15 g (a 3 cm piece) ginger, crushed
- ✓10 g (about 3 cloves) garlic, crushed
- ✓21 g (3 tbsp) M05 fish masala
- ✓4 g (1 large sprig) curry leaves
- ✓300 ml water
- ✓3 g (½ tsp) M07 salt, or plain salt
Allergens: Fish. Gluten (wheat) — only if your asafoetida is compounded with wheat flour, as most brands are (it arrives with M05).
Equipment: Unglazed clay pot (meen chatti), 22 cm. Fish scissors or a small sharp knife for cleaning. Substitute: any heavy non-reactive pan — stainless steel, enamel, a kalchatti. You lose the seasoned wall and about five minutes of residual cooking, so take the pot off the heat slightly later. Never aluminium or bare iron with kudampuli.
Per serving (estimated)
| Energy | 257 kcal |
| Protein | 24 g |
| Fibre | 3 g |
| Net carbohydrate | 7 g |
| Total carbohydrate | 10 g |
| Sugars | 3 g |
| Fat | 15 g |
| Saturated fat | 6 g |
| Sodium | 320 mg |
From ICMR-NIN IFCT 2017 and USDA FoodData Central. Per-serving figures stay the same when you scale.
Method — tap a step to mark it done, tap a time to start a timer
- Rub the cleaned sardines with a pinch of the salt and set them aside while you build the gravy, . Salt draws a little surface moisture and firms the flesh so the fish holds together in the pot.
- Heat the clay pot slowly, , then add 7 g of the coconut oil.
- Cook the shallots, ginger and garlic over a low-medium flame until the shallots have gone soft and gold with no white showing, .
- Add the M05 and curry leaves and stir , until the raw dusty edge lifts and the paste darkens by one shade and no more. A tablespoon of water if it threatens to catch.
- Add the water, the kudampuli with its soaking liquid and the rest of the salt, and simmer until the gravy is glossy and thick enough to leave a brief trail when you draw a spoon through it.
- Lay the sardines in, in one layer, heads to tails so they interlock. Spoon gravy over them and shake the pot to settle them.
- Simmer at a bare tremble, without stirring, until the flesh has gone opaque and lifts cleanly from the backbone when you probe the thickest part, . Sardines cook faster than steaks and overcook into cotton wool, so err early.
- Finish off the heat with the remaining 5 g of coconut oil and a few fresh curry leaves torn over. Leave the pot alone for .
Why this worksSardine fat sits under the skin and in the dark muscle along the flank, and at a tremble it renders into the gravy rather than staying in the fish — which is why this curry tastes rich on 12 g of oil. Kudampuli's acid then does two jobs: it firms the protein so the fillets hold, and its rounded sourness cuts fat as tamarind's brighter acid cannot.
Sourcing note
Fresh sardines are one of the few genuinely cheap fish in the West, and they are the same family as mathi. In the US: Pacific sardines on the West Coast, Spanish or Portuguese sardines frozen elsewhere; failing that, tinned sardines in water — see SWAP IT, because the method changes. In the UK: fresh Cornish sardines are excellent and seasonal from May to October, and pilchards are the same fish grown up. In the Gulf: oum is sardine and is everywhere. In Australia: Australian sardine, sold as pilchard in Victoria and South Australia. Buy them whole, and ask the fishmonger to gut them if you would rather not.
If you are watching…
Blood sugar: 7 g of net carbohydrate. This is a low-load dish and 24 g of protein per serving; the meal is decided by the grain.
Blood pressure: 320 mg. Sardine is naturally slightly higher in sodium than white fish. Two grams of added salt instead of three takes this to about 250 mg and the kudampuli carries it.
Cholesterol: 6 g of saturated fat, and roughly two-thirds of it is the sardine's own rather than the added oil. Sardine fat is largely unsaturated, which is why 15 g of total fat here reads better than 15 g from coconut. Swapping the coconut oil for sesame takes saturated fat to about 4 g.
Swap it
Tinned sardines in water → 2 × 120 g tins, drained. Add them at step 7 for 2–3 minutes only, off the heat if possible. Calcium goes up substantially because of the bones; sodium goes up to roughly 550 mg per serving, so use no added salt at all.
No sardines → ayala (mackerel) cut into 3 cm rounds. Firmer, less oily, cooks in the same time.
No kudampuli → 15 g tamarind pulp. Brighter, and the curry no longer improves overnight.
Coconut oil → sesame oil throughout. Saturated fat falls by about 2 g per serving; you lose the finishing aroma, which is the one thing coconut oil does that nothing replaces. (Allergen: this swap introduces sesame.)
Make ahead · store · freeze
Better after 4 hours and better still overnight. Fridge 3 days covered, non-metal. Freeze 1 month only — sardine fat oxidises faster than white-fish fat and a frozen mathi curry starts tasting of old oil sooner than you would expect. Reheat at a tremble.
Leftovers
Lift the fillets off the bones, break them up, and fold into a cheera thoran (R065). Or mash them into the gravy with a fork and spread the result on toast, which is what a Kerala household in London does and does not admit to.
Troubleshooting
Bitter: the black line inside the cavity was not scraped out, or a gall bladder burst during gutting. Nothing fixes it.
Fish broke up into the gravy: it was stirred, or it went in before the gravy thickened, or the sardines were more than a day old. A broken mathi curry is still a very good sauce.
Overpoweringly fishy rather than rich: the sardines were not fresh. Sardine is the fish that punishes a bad buy hardest — clear eyes and red gills or do not buy.
Not sour enough: one more piece of kudampuli, simmered 5 minutes in a ladleful of the gravy and stirred back in.
Serve with
R015 Matta Rice · R020 Kanji · R056 Muthira Thoran · R072 Pavakka Theeyal
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