Deep fried Fish (Konkani Style)

March 8, 2015 Posted by Shweta Shanbhag

white bait, bolanjeer, motiyala deep fried

It is difficult to live in Hyderabad with Konkani tastes. I have had fish 2-3 times in a week for most of my life but we do not get good fresh sea water fish easily in Hyderabad. We do get river fish like Rohu, Katla etc here but somehow I haven’t developed a taste for them.

WhiteBait is one sea fish which is slightly easily available here in one of the AP fisheries units called Matsyadarshini on Banjara Hills Road no 10. Apparently this fish flows from the sea to the river and hence probably it is available here or maybe it is just transported from the coasts. So I deep fried WhiteBait (Belanji, Motiyala in Konkani, also called Bolanjeer ) for lunch today. Since its a small fish we deep fry it with the bones and it adds to the crunchiness of the fritters.

Here is my Konkani simple fish fry recipe

Ingredients
500 gms of white bait

2 tsp red chilli powder1 tsp haldi powder

1 tsp ginger garlic paste

100 gms of semolina(bombay rawa)

Oil for deep frying

Salt to taste

Method

1. Clean the fish. Remove the head, the tail and the scales.

2. Marinate it with salt, turmeric, red chilli powder and ginger garlic paste and keep aside for 15-30 mins.

3. Heat sunflower oil in a vessel for deep frying on medium heat till it is very hot (almost smoking).
4. Roll the fish in Rava (Suji, Semolina) and deep fry on medium flame. Fry in batches of 10 fish at a time. Fry on both sides till the Fish is golden brown and crispy. Since this fish is very small it cooks easily.

This recipe can be used to fry almost any fish but since it needs a lot of oil, I prefer the Tawa fry Fish. WhiteBait is too small and hence this is the preferred way to cook it.

Category: konkani,non-vegetarian,south Indian

Tagged with: belanji, fish, fritters, motiyala, quick, side-dish, starters, whitebait

4 thoughts on “Deep fried Fish (Konkani Style)”

TP says:

March 4, 2012 at 9:09 pm

Looks amazing Shweta … i know this fish as ‘mandeli’ … i remember during my childhood days I only used to eat the crunchy tails of this fish leaving the main part for my parents 🙂

Reply
Shweta says:

March 18, 2012 at 3:26 pm

Thanks TP..Thanks for stopping by and your comments
Mandeli is the golden fish – looks similar…This is the silver one

Reply
Sheeba S says:

May 3, 2015 at 1:13 pm

Amazing! its yummy , quick and simple. I also tried the recipe with tindora or Indian ivy gourd instead of suji i added besan powder. 🙂

Reply
Shweta Shanbhag says:

May 4, 2015 at 5:50 am

Thanks a ton Sheeba…yes thats a very creative use of the recipe 🙂 I will try that too

Reply