Shutkir Pachmishali
Dry-cured fish cooked with summer vegetables
- Cooking time90 mins
Calories238kcal
Shutki or dried fish is a delicacy in Bengal like many other parts of South Asia. This particular family recipe is a pachmishali torkari—cooked with a "medely of vegetables"—amped up a notch with shutki. We are using dried loitta fish, also known as Bombil or Bombay duck in other parts of India, but you can use any dried fish you like.
The main vegetables that my grandmother used in this recipe are katwa data (which is a type of amaranth that is grown for its fleshy stems), and sweet pumpkin. It is also a bit unusual for a pachmishali in our family to use onion and garlic, but this one does because they pair well with the strong flavours of dried fish.
If you are cooking this is late in summer or during the monsoons, definitely include jackfruit seeds (kathal'er beej) which are abundant during this time as ripe jackfruits are in season.
🌾 We've served shutkir pachmishali with Mohanshal rice from Amar Khamar.
Books in this recipe
Ingredients
For boiling shutki
- 60 g shutki (dried, fermented fish)
- 5 g salt
- ½ tsp turmeric
- 300 ml water
For cooking
- 100 g mustard oil
- 2 dried red chillies
- ½ tsp kaalo jeere (nigella seeds)
- 200 g potato (3-cm cubes)
- 60 g sweet potato (3-cm cubes)
- 240 g pumpkin (4-cm cubes)
- 125 g katwa data (3-cm long)
- 10 kathaer beej (sun-dried jackfruit seeds)
- 140 g onion
- 80 g tomato
- 16 g garlic
- 10 g green chillies
- 1 tsp turmeric
- 1 tsp red chilli powder
- 10 g salt
- 5 g sugar
Method
- Chop the shutki in 3-cm pieces. Add it to a saucepan along with salt, turmeric and water, and boil it for 8 mins. Strain and set aside.
- Meanwhile, cut potatoes and sweet potatoes in 3-cm cubes, and pumpkin in 4-cm cubes. Destring and chop katwar data in 3-cm long sections; halve the kathaler beej. Slice onions; roughly chop the tomato. Make a paste of the garlic and greeen chillies together.
- Heat 30g mustard oil in a kadai. Use your fingers to break up the boiled shutki into finer shreds.
- Add it to the pan, along with 1 tbsp of the garlic–green chilli paste, and fry on medium heat for 8 mins. Remove from the pan and set aside.
- Now add the remaining 70g mustard oil to the kadai. Temper it with dried red chillies and kaalo jeere.
- Add potato, sweet potato and pumpkin, and fry on medium heat, covered, for 3 mins.
- Add katwar data and kathaler beej, and fry again for 3 mins.
- Add onions and fry for 2 mins, before adding the remaining garlic–green chilli paste.
- Fry for 2 mins and add the tomato, along with salt, sugar, turmeric and red chilli powder.
- Keep cooking everything together, covered but stirring occasionally, for about 15 mins until the vegetables are considerably softened.
- Add the fried shutki, and continue cooking until vegetables are cooked.
