Mtuzi wa Samaki

I'll be cooking dinners at home two days out of the week and I'm pretty keen to experiment with new and interesting recipes. In one of the blogs I'm following (and damned if I can remember right now which one it is, argh!), they've set up little "themes" for choosing recipes each week. Some are pretty specific ("Citrus") and some are more open ended ("Love").

This weeks theme is "Rice/Noodles", which gave me a perfect excuse to try out an East African recipe I discovered called Mtuzi wa Samaki. (White Fish in Coconut Curry)



This recipe originates from the tiny island of Zanzibar, but the use of Indian-style curry shows it's history of trade. Now it's popular all along the coastal region of East Africa, and oh my goodness is it now popular in my home.
I can not begin to tell you how delicious this is!

Mtuzi wa Samaki

Ingredients:
* Oil
* White fish filets (I used 250g local whiting)
* 1 Onion, diced
* 2 Capsicums (suggested red and green for colour, I could only get red ones at my local markets), chopped roughly
* 6-8 cloves of garlic, minced
* 1 cups worth of tomatoes that have been seeded and diced
* 1 1/2 cups coconut milk
* 2-3 teaspoons of Garam Masala
* 1-2 tablespoons of Tamarind paste
* Salt and pepper to taste

How to make it:
1. Heat the oil over medium heat in a large skillet. Season the fish with salt and pepper. Sear the fish on both sides and remove from heat. Do not cook them all the way through, just set them aside on a plate for now.

2. Reduce the heat to medium-low and add the onion and capsicum. Sauté until the onion is translucent. Have patience on this, it's worth it! Add the garlic and sauté for a further 1-2 minutes.

3. Add in the coconut milk, garam masala and tamarind paste. Bring it up to a boil, then turn the heat down to low, cover and let simmer for 6-8 minutes.

4. Add the fish fillets, nestle them down into the juices then cover once more and continue to simmer for a further 5-10 minutes; until the fish is cooked through.

You can serve it with whatever you like! We had leftover rice, but Naan bread would have been lovely to have had as well.

Please, PLEASE, try making this dish. It's easy to do, the fish can easily be substituted out with something veg-friendly, there's so little dishes to clean up afterwards and it is SO damn delicious.

I seriously licked my plate clean. It's that good.