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Shrimp with crushed mustard seeds

Shrimp with peas and parsley

Shrimp with sweet Italian peppers

Shrimp in bread crumbs, Indian style

Shrimp with brown sauce

Shrimp with dill and ginger

Shrimp, crab, or lobster, Kerala style

Baked striped bass with yellow rice

Sea bass in green chutney

Codfish steaks in yogurt

Stuffed flounder

Mackerel with onions

SEE ALSO:

Barbecued jumbo shrimp

Barbecued swordfish

Shrimp pullao

Halibut or cod pullao

round the age of seven, while I was still fishing with a bent pin for a hook and a piece of cane for a float, my greatest heroes were my brothers. A decade separated us in age—but it was more than the age difference that elicited my respect. They were “proper” fishermen. When they went fishing it was not just to the Jumna River. The Jumna was, after all, just across the street from us, and therefore quite ordinary. With their tapering fishing rods and their complex array of reels, hooks, bait, jars, and nets, they set out to catch rahu at the Okhla dam and trout in the cold streams of Kashmir.

They were always accompanied, on these trips, by their hero, a mysterious, magnificent man called Munnia. I never knew his second name. I never really understood exactly who he was. Munnia was then about forty, tall and silent with shining dark brown skin and thick black wavy hair. He knew everything about fish. He knew where the fish were biting, and when. He knew which bait was most effective on which day. I once saw him clad in a white loincloth, leaping on the slippery rocks that formed stepping stones across a shallow stream of water at the Okhla dam. Suddenly he stopped and jerked his head to one side. Silently he bent over. He held that pose patiently for fifteen minutes. Then he straightened up, triumphantly holding a singhara that he had “tickled” and caught. Once the fish for the day had been caught, Munnia would open his knapsack, pull out a pot and some spices, light a fire with twigs, and produce an instant feast for his entire party. Often he would rub the fish with salt, turmeric, and hot red pepper and then fry it. Munnia’s world was, of course, limited to fresh-water fish. I doubt if he ever saw an ocean or a fish from the sea.

With improved refrigeration some seafood is now available in all the major cities of India. While availability of mollusks remains limited to the coast, shrimp (called prawns in India), lobster, and pomfret can be found even in Delhi. And pomfret is, in my family, easily the most popular fish. It is a flat salt-water fish, on an average about 8 to 9 inches long, somewhat like a large butterfish, with its skeletal structure so obligingly designed as to make filleting a pleasure and eating a bone-free ecstasy. Its flesh is tender but firm, flaking delicately when cooked. The pomfret can be fried, baked, grilled, or cooked in banana leaves or green chutney. It is served at lunches, dinners, and official banquets.

Unfortunately, neither the pomfret nor the rahu and singhara mentioned earlier are available in America. What I will do in this chapter is to give you Indian recipes adapted for fish normally found in American fish markets. The recipes for shrimp and lobsters remain basically unchanged, but I have modified some of the pomfret recipes and used them for the striped bass, which I love, and the flounder. Instead of rahu, I have used cod. You could also use carp.

Coconut palms fringe most of the India’s coast from Bombay down to Cape Comorin and up again to Calcutta. Quite naturally, therefore, the fish caught along there are often cooked with grated coconut or with the “milk” obtained from soaking freshly grated coconut in water. In Bengal, where the populace has rioted when fish was temporarily unavailable, a paste made out of ground black mustard seeds is often added to fish to give it a very special nose-tingling pungency. Moghul recipes from North India call for neither mustard seeds nor coconuts, but often for northern spices like saffron.

I need hardly stress that fish must be bought fresh—the eyes must