Patrani Machi

These past few days, I have been simply trying out recipes from other blogs and from other food websites. I am really amazed to find a lot of interesting recipes on some blogs. Also, I have come across some familiar recipes with a simpler way to prepare them. One such recipe is Patrani Machi. My eldest sister's mother-in-law used to make this recipe all the time when I used to visit my sister at Colaba, Mumbai. I simply loved this dish, but I always found it to be very tedious to make it at home on my own. Firstly, finding banana leaves, then wrapping the fish in these leaves, then tying them up with a thread and finally steaming then. I found it easy to go to sister's place and eat it rather than prepare it at home :)

Last week, I was browsing through hypercity website...this is a hypermarket in Mumbai which I normally visit when in India. I found the simpler way of making Patrani Machi on their website. They suggested making it with ice-berg lettuce. When I read the recipe, my husband immediately told me that it would not taste nice with the lettuce leaves. But, I decided to give it a try and made this recipe with Halibut fish. It came out so good that one could not find any difference between the traditional way of preparing this and using ice-berg lettuce to prepare it. I took a few pictures of the dish just before baking it. Then, when it was ready to take out from the oven, we were so excited to eat it that I simply forgot to take any pictures. However, I had a few last pieces remaining and took a quick picture of it. The picture might not look appetizing but believe me, this dish is a must try. It takes only 15 minutes for preparation and 30 minutes for baking the fish.

As hyperCity has removed the recipe from their website...I am typing out the same for all of you who are interested in making this quick and easy dish.

Ingredients:

6-8 pieces of boneless skinless halibut (about 2 inch size)

8-10 big leaves of Ice-berg lettuce

oil

for the green chutney:

7 mint leaves (optional)

half a bunch of coriander leaves

3 - 4 cloves of garlic

a small piece of ginger

1/4 tsp turmeric powder

3 green chillies

1 tsp cumin seeds

11/2 tbsp grated coconut

1 tbsp lime juice

salt to taste

Method:

• Grind all the ingredients for the chutney in a mixer to a smooth paste. Add a little water while grinding if required. The consistency of the chutney should not be too thick or too watery.
• Apply this chutney to the halibut pieces of both sides and wrap this halibut fish in ice-berg lettuce leaf. One leaf per fish. Fold the leaf around the fish so as to make a packet as shown in the picture above.
• Follow this procedure for all the pieces of halibut
• Grease a baking tray with oil.
• Place the lettuce wrapped fish in the tray and sprinkle a little oil on top of it.
• Bake this in the oven for about 30 minutes till the fish is cooked completely.
• You could serve this with rice and dal.

Note: The lettuce can be eaten or can be removed and kept aside. But the lettuce tastes equally good. I used halibut for this recipe but any white fish could be used for this recipe.