Rui is a familiar favourite in the Bengali kitchen, most often cooked as a dry bhuna or with vegetables. For a change, you can make it with lemon leaves and mustard.

The pungency of mustard combined with the light sourness and fragrance of lemon leaves gives the familiar rui a completely new taste, and the saucy dish goes well with hot rice at lunch. It needs neither many spices nor much fuss; it can be made easily with ordinary ingredients from the kitchen.

Wash black and white mustard seeds well. Grind them to a fine paste with cashews, almonds and four green chillies to make a nut and mustard paste.

Put the cleaned rui pieces in a bowl. Add the paste, red chilli powder, turmeric powder, coriander powder, cumin powder and salt to taste, with a little mustard oil and the juice of a piece of lemon. Rub the fish well and leave it to marinate for a while.

Heat mustard oil in a pan and fry chopped onion until nicely brown. Lift the marinated fish pieces out and set them aside, then add the remaining spice mix from the bowl to the fried onion and sauté it well.

When the spices are well cooked, add the marinated fish to the pan. Add a little water, cover and cook over a medium flame. When the oil rises from the spices, add 1 to 1.5 cups of water for the sauce and two whole green chillies, and cover again.

When the sauce has thickened a little, stir in roasted cumin powder and sugar. When it has reduced further to coat the fish and the oil rises to the top, scatter a few fresh lemon leaves over it.

Finally, turn the heat right down, cover the pan and leave it on dum for a while so the fragrance of the lemon leaves spreads through the dish. Then uncover, switch off the heat and serve the rui with lemon leaves and mustard hot with rice.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.