Currying favour

It's difficult to find a definitive recipe for something as common as Alleppey fish curry. All the more so when you don't understand the language or the almost political ramifications of choosing one curry over the other.

But when we arrived in Alleppey we had help in the form of Anoop, a friend of a friend and translator-cum-boat-steadier (don't even ask me about that one) during our short stay in the backwaters hub. While specializing in coastal cuisine at a catering college in Tamil Nadu, Anoop had done a paper on Mariamma.

Mariammah is something of a local legend. She used to be a cook at a hotel called Star in Alleppey. For almost seven years, she produced the best-loved classic dishes of the region, everything from fish curry to mutton stews to vegetarian delicacies. But I think she came into her own after retirement. Now in her seventies, she is so much in demand as a caterer, she doesn't have time to breathe during the wedding season.

Luckily for us, when we arrived at her home, Mariamma was between weddings. So she cooked up a storm for us with her signature dish, Alleppey fish curry.

I've always been a strong propagandist for the use of local produce in food and I'm pretty sure that Mariamma's Alleppey fish curry tasted really special because we got all the ingredients from a 5 square km radius. That - and the fact that she had years and years of experience. Which explains the way she humoured us throughout the stay, even going to the extent of fixing up a match for Anoop!