A few weeks back I was asking my readers for their favorite Bengali Recipe with the letter "C", as a part of the crowd-sourced "A-Z of Bengali Cuisine" that I am trying to do. Of the various ones that came up, one was
Chitol Maacher Muithya.
Now growing in a
Ghoti family, Chitol Muithya was not a dish I had heard of in the entire course of my childhood.
Chitol Maach( also known as Clown Knife fish, Google tells me) was my Mother's favorite fish and she loved this beautiful oily fish in a mustard gravy made with a certain cut of the fish called "peti". However she never ever cooked or even mentioned a Muithya.
I do not remember how or when or why I first heard of Muitha. But when my cousin sister got married to a "Bangal" family and her brand new mother-in-law cooked a chitol muitha for us, I was in love with this new dish. The
steamed and fried balls of the minced chitol fish in a spicy gravy took my heart. It was very close to the fish koftas my Mother made but not quiet.
It is apparently more of a "
Bangal" (Bengalis from East Bengal) specialty than
Ghoti(Bengalis originally from West Bengal). The bony part of the chitol fish, the "
gaada", which is not as coveted in gravy as the "
peti" is used to make these steamed and fried fish dumplings. The name "Muithya" probably comes from "
Mutho" or "
Muthi", a Bengali word for fistful and refers to the fact the fish meat is to be taken in the palm of one's hands and shaped into a ball.
In spite of my severe longing for the muitha, my Mother never made this dish at home. She dismissed the whole process of cleaning the
chitol of flesh and bones as "too much work".I had it a couple more times when my sister's Ma-in-law made it and always had a fondness for this dish.
Surprisingly, like my Mother, I never attempted to make this dish. Too difficult, I dismissed. So, when Chitol Maacher Muithya came up as one of the favorites in the category "C", I decided to ask my readers to share their recipe.
It is a precious Bengali recipe, too precious to be lost, even if it is not my Mother's or my grandmother's.
When
Rituparna Moitra, a reader of my blog, kindly sent me the detailed recipe with pictures, I had all intentions to cook it. But then, I realized I wouldn't be doing it anytime soon. So with her permission, I am sharing this treasured recipe from her and her family's kitchen,
exactly as she narrates it. I could not have done this dish justice and so over to Rituporna for
Chitol Maacher Muithya in her own words.
Thank you much dear Rituporna. All Pictures and Writing in this recipe are
copyright of Rituporna Moitra. Please give her a warm welcome.
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| Rituparna Moitra's Chitol Maach er Muitha |
Rituparna says...
"
I am currently residing in Arlington, VA. I completed my grad school in Boston & doing my post doc research at FDA for the past one year.
Cooking is my passion & as much as I try out new cuisines & recipes, I regularly cook our 'traditional' Bengali recipes. Most of these recipes are recreations based on memories of taste bud from the food my mom would make for us.
Chitol er muithya is one such recipe which I remember Ma making once in my teenage years to serve for some special house guests.
She would scrape the flesh off the chitol "gaada" ( I always confuse between peti & gaada) with a spoon by moving the spoon against to the direction of the flesh to minimize bones coming out. Then she would spend hours removing the fine bones to make chitol keema , the main ingredient for this recipe.
In this world of globalization, we in the US get a lot of things 'export quality' & catered to our needs. One such being packaged chitol keema in frozen section of Bangladeshi stores. A friend once got 'blackfish paste' from an Asian store in a similar wrapping for me to make muithya but the end result was not good.
Here is what I do with the chitol keema. I am bad with quantifying ingredients but will try to include details as much as possible."
