A twelfth-century recipe from the Mānasollāsa of the Western Chalukya court: fish milt roasted over the fire, sliced, fried in hot oil, and finished with cardamom, pepper, rock salt, and asafoetida
Origin: Kalyani & the Deccan, India
From the journey of Asafoetida.
Asafoetida had been known in India for centuries as a medicine; this recipe shows it in a royal kitchen. It comes from the Mānasollāsa, the encyclopaedia of kingship attributed to Someśvara III, king of the Western Chalukyas, and dated to about 1131, which covers everything a king might need to know, from statecraft to the pleasures of the table. Its chapter on royal recreation describes the sport of fishing at length, the baits, the lines, and the fish of each kind of water, and then turns to cooking the catch. In the translation by Nalini Sadhale and Y. L. Nene the recipe reads: 'Take out the scrotums of a fish and roast them in fire. When hard, cut into pieces and fry in heated oil. Add powdered cardamom, pepper, and rock salt and season with asafetida.' The 'scrotums' are presumably the milt, the soft white roe of the male fish, which is still eaten across Asia and Europe. The same chapter gives other ways with fish: pieces cooked in tamarind juice, dusted with wheat flour, and fried in oil with rock salt, cardamom, and pepper; and pieces salted and stored in earthen jars, to be roasted at mealtimes. The seasoning is the seasoning of a court, and pepper and cardamom were the spices of the southern kingdoms; the asafoetida had come a very long way, from the deserts of Afghanistan and Iran. The recipe does not say how the asafoetida was added, but the food historian Akshay Chavan, writing on the Mānasollāsa, notes that asafoetida is its commonest spice and is used dissolved in water, as cooks in Karnataka and Maharashtra still use it, and that is how it is added here. The court at Kalyani has long gone, and the dish is a historical one; it is given here as the text describes it.
The text does not name the oil, and sesame or groundnut both suit the dish. Hard roe from cod or another white fish can replace the milt; roast it a little longer, as it is denser. The same seasoning, applied to firm white fish dusted with wheat flour and fried, gives another of the Mānasollāsa's fish dishes.
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