Meen Pollichathu - Fish Grilled in Banana Leaf

Banana leaves are hard to come by in Melbourne!  My neighbour has a banana tree - and the leaves are always shredded by the awful Melbourne winds. In winter the tree simply dries up and turns into a brown shriveled up mess. I know how the tree feels - it is the Melbourne cold - I feel like that too!!!!

I often see posts of beautifully grilled fish in banana leaves and salivate thinking of the ones I have had back home. The other day I spotted this banana leaf in a pack for $3.00 and decided to try it.

I got home and opened the pack and realised that it was half a leaf and it was broken in places - so I could not use one leaf as a whole and had to make do with the bits.  Still I was happy with the result and enjoyed the flavours of banana leaf infused in the grilled fish.

Normally, if the leaf is whole you wrap the fish in the leaf and tie it up using a bit of banana stem fibre like a little parcel and then it is easy to manoeuvre  when you are grilling it. 

Ingredients:

1 kg sardines cleaned, scored  (you can use any fish you want, I just happened to have sardines at hand)

1 teaspoon chilli powder

1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder

salt to taste

To the cleaned fish, add all of the ingredients and massage it in.  Put it in the fridge while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Ingredients for grilling the fish:

1 large banana leaf - or several small pieces as in this case!

A handful of shallots, sliced - or 1/2 a red onion sliced

2-3 green chillies, chopped

1 inch piece of ginger, chopped

1 sprig curry leaf

1 teaspoon black pepper

1 small piece of tamarind (seeds removed)

1 tablespoon oil

Blend the shallots, chillies, pepper, tamarind, curry leaf and tamarind into a paste and keep it ready.

Method: 

In a saucepan, place a piece of banana leaf.  Place all the fish and the mixture that you just prepared in the leaf.  Drizzle oil over the fish. Cover the leaf with another piece of leaf and place a platter down to hold the fish and leaves down as shown below.  Cook for 15 minutes on a medium flame on one side.  Then place the platter down, turn around the fish parcel and cook the other side for a further 15 minutes.

At the end of the cooking process your fish parcel will look something like the above.

Then you open the parcel - inhale the flavours and dig in!