Doi Maachh (Fish with curd sauce)

Note: This is one of my favourite dishes made by my grandmom. Many a times I've tried to replicate the magic in my kitchen in Bangalore but there was always something missing. Today I prepared this dish along with her and came very very close to her level of perfection...almost there, but not quite! The missing ingredient I realised, was of course, love!
;-) ;-) ;-)

Ingredients
Rohu fish- 8 pieces
Onion paste- 3 tbsp
Ginger paste- 1 tsp
Curd- 100gm
Green chillies- 4
Turmeric- 2 tsp
Red chilly powder- ½ tsp
Oil- 3-4 tbsp
Garam Masala whole- (2 cloves, 2 cinnamon sticks, 2 cardamoms)
1 Bay leaf
Sugar and Salt to taste

Procedure
Wash the fish pieces and mix with 1 ½ tsp turmeric and salt (to taste). Keep aside for sometime (1/2 hr should be fine). If the fish is very fresh there is no need to fry it separately. However, to be on the safe side just lightly fry the fish in the oil (just put in the heated oil and turn on both sides…no need for a proper deep fry). Now put aside the fish. There might be bits which get stuck on the bottom of the fry pan. Just take it all out with a khunti so that the oil looks clear again.
Now add the Garam masala in the hot oil and the bay leaf. Add the onion and ginger paste to this and fry till the oil comes out. Keep stirring to avoid masala getting stuck or burnt. Add the red chilli powder and fry a little longer. Now place the fried fish into the pan carefully.
Beat up the curd to an even paste and add a little salt, sugar and turmeric powder to this. Pour this mixture on to the pan and shake the pan a little bit to allow the curd-paste to get mixed with the fried masala. Add the green chillies to this and let the mixture boil. Sometimes my grandmom adds a few raisins in it as well. But it tastes yum even without it. As the gravy gets done, carefully turn over all the pieces of fish once.
Ting tong! Five more mins and the dish is ready to serve!

The entire preparation time is only 30mins..in fact, sometimes even less than that! Isn’t that fabulous! :-))