The first time I made fish curry, it was a practice run for a dinner party.

Dish #43: Fish curry

I learned some important things the first time I made fish curry, but getting fast at cleaning and fileting whole European seabass was not one of them. Confession: it took me over 1.5 hours to skin and filet three fish. Even though I had done all the other prep ahead of time, all of those 1.5 hours was spent with my back to my guests.

Anyway, the fish and curry sauce turned out great. I plan to sharpen my knives, and improve my skinning and fileting speed.

Dish #44: Basmati rice with dried lime

I took my own advice, and doubled the dried lime to rice ratio since the first time I tried this combo. It was really great; the lime-scented, slightly sour, slightly bitter rice was great with the fish.

Dish #45: Mango pickle

Added to the pantry, but not photographed: mustard oil and asafetida powder

Flipping through the Asian Pickles book Morgan bought me, I realized that I had just enough lead time to make green mango pickle – and I already had green mangos! Jessica was visiting, and had never been to Dong Xuan Center, so we hoped on transit and popped over there to buy the required mustard oil and asafetida powder.

As soon as I cut into the mangos I had, I realized they were not as green as I thought, but I carried on. The end result was a fruity mango pickle, something between a mango chutney and mango pickle. I really like it.

Dish #46: Mustard leaves with paneer

This tin of mustard leaves was the inspiration for the dinner party. This tin just seemed way too big for two people. Inviting people over for an elaborate fish curry feast seemed like the only way to consume it.

Verdict: it smells a bit of farts, and is somewhat aggressive tasting, but tempered with a fresh raita (not pictured above, for some reason), it was a nice accompaniment.

Dish #47: Pandan pudding

What can I say. You boil some water, whisk the contents of the package in, and moments later you have a delightful pudding.

In addition to pandan flavour (the vanilla of Southeast Asia), this pudding is also flavoured with coconut.

This pudding was an impulse buy, but I’ll be buying it again on purpose.

Tally

Items used up: two
Items added: two (mustard oil and asafetida powder)
Items partly used: five + plus the two new items
Items used from the “Just use already” category: none