Cooking with Dr. Monkey

Today's episode: Bombay fish cakes.

And before any of you smart asses try to tell me it's no longer Bombay, I don't give a shit.  I got this recipe out of a cookbook titled My Bombay Kitchen, so these are Bombay fish cakes, not Mumbai fish cakes.

I started by poaching in lightly salted water a cod fillet that weighed a little under a pound.  Let me stress here that if you go to buy fish and it smells strongly, then don't buy it.  Only buy fish that does not smell fishy.  I live inland in the TN mountains so it's hard to find fresh ocean fish but one store in my area usually has good flash frozen fish fillets that don't reek of fish when they are thawed.

After the cod was cooked all the way through, I flaked it.

Next I finely chopped some garden fresh cilantro and I mixed it with some ginger/garlic paste that I had made.  To make the paste you grate or finely chop some fresh ginger root and you mix it with about the same amount of garlic.  You can put the ginger and garlic in a food processor with a little water and pulse it together or you can do what I did and pound the garlic with your mortar and pestle and mix the ginger in with it.

Next I finely sliced up two biggish green onions and I put them in the bowl with the paste, then I added the fish flakes and mixed it all up with an egg.

While all that was going on I had boiled some potatoes, about three medium sized ones and when they got done I mashed them.  Let me stress here that if you make this recipe DO NOT WHIP your potatoes, MASH them.  The potatoes need to be on the dry side so use only a little milk when you mash them, and in this recipe I used a little fresh made locally sourced keifer. 

Then I mixed the fish mixture with the potatoes.  While my oil was heating up in my non stick frying pan, I made balls out of the potato and fish mixture, I made them about the size of one and a half golf balls.  Then I dipped each ball into a beaten egg mix and I then rolled in finely crushed bread crumbs.  When I put the fish cake balls in the pan I flattened them slightly.  I let them cook until they became golden brown on one side, then I flipped them over to let them cook on the other side.  They ended up looking like this:

I served them up with a side of Sparky's homemade coleslaw and a sliced fresh tomato that had been dressed with a bit of balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, local goat cheese, and garden fresh basil leaves:

The verdict: delicious.  The garlic ginger, the fresh cilantro, and the fresh finely sliced green onion really give them a great flavor.  The cod didn't taste fishy and the egg breadcrumb coating made them crunchy and delicious.  I'll definitely make them again.

A League of Mullets Movie Review

Yo, we watched Salaam Bombay! and here is out review:

This movie came out almost 20 years ago and much has been written about it already by much better writers and reviewers than us, so we're gonna keep this review short and sweet.

We found this movie about street kids in Bombay, although since this movie was made one of the big Hindu political parties in India has renamed the city Mumbai, to be unrelentingly sad. Just when you think the little kid who is the lead in the film is about to catch a break and have something good happen to him something comes along and stops it. It's a great character study of this child, who's real name is Shafiq Syed, and his environs in Bombay, but it's not an uplifting movie by any means.

The director, Mira Nair, went on to direct many other films, among them are The Perez Family, Monsoon Wedding, and a movie that Dr. Monkerstein is eagerly awaiting on DVD, The Namesake. Thank goodness all her movies are not big downers like Salaam Bombay! is.

The star of the film, Shafiq Syed, was a wonder in his role as the street urchin. He gets more across with one look than many Hollywood actors get across in their entire acting careers, are you listening Steven Segal? You can't help but love the kid as he struggles to survive amidst the drugs, the squalor, and the hopelessness of the Bombay streets.

In the end we recommend you see this film even though it's sadder than the time when we wrecked our Chrysler Cordoba on the way to a kegger and when we finally got to the kegger the keg was empty. Sometimes it's good to see what others have to put up with in their lives and hopefully after seeing it you will become more sensitive to other cultures and people. And you'll realize that your problems sometimes are nothing compared to what other people have to put up with on other parts of the planet.

So say us! So say we all!!!!!