So, what would you do, if you are a Malayali with a strong craving to have some Seafood??? What if that craving is fuelled by videos showing certain youtubers essentially devouring a bunch of Seafood dishes with Rice??? And on top of all that, what if you are a foodie who is on a limited budget, stuck at home in say, somewhere in and around Trivandrum?? 😅 Well, let’s talk about one idea that you can go for which is to assemble your own combo as shown in the pic below… 😂😜
Well, this idea would require you to be able to access the Kazhakuttom and nearby areas as thats where I got the food from… Sadly, it is quite hard to get good quality seafood these days and so I went for two of my favourite places to get Seafood from in the area, which is Hotel Karthika Park and Poomaram Restaurant… So, what I got from Karthika Park were the Boiled Rice, the Travancore Fish Curry, the Chemmeen Curry and to go as a cooler and a replacement to a Pachadi, went for their Veg Raita as well… Poomaram has always been one of my favourite places for fried Fish and since I splurged most of my budget at Karthika Park, I only got the Ayala Fry from there…
Coming to the taste, the rice was cooked just right… Raita was just like any other, though I wished it had more of the vegetables in it… But as expected, it did help cool down the overall spiciness of the meal… The Travancore Fish Curry was nice though a bit on the spicy side for me… It was made using the Cobia fish and the gravy appeared to be coconut based… The problem I felt was that the fish was slightly overcooked but the masala in the gravy was undercooked as in, the raw taste of the dry spices, especially that Chilly Powder was still present… If I were to make a guess, it would be that whoever cooked this, ended up dropping in the Fish too early and then tried to make up for the undercooked masala and then probably remembered that the fish will become overcooked and then took it off the stove and sent it as it is… The Chemmeen Curry on the other hand though made with the same gravy, was cooked right… The Prawns used tasted fresh and was perfectly cooked… Last but not least, the Ayala Fry from Poomaram was just yummy… Since the fishes were small compared to the usual size, they sent me two instead of the one for the price… It was indeed cooked well… The spices used were all at the perfect level where it didn’t mask the taste of the fish and the seasoning was also perfect… The fish itself tasted fresh too… The overall combination of everything did indeed taste yummy to me, with the Raita providing the necessary balancing effect against the spiciness of the curries… So, my seafood craving was well satisfied this time 😇
Thats it for now… It was indeed a very nice Kerala style seafood meal or a Mini Samudram (Sea) Meal if I were to name it… I for one am hoping to do this again, probably with different varieties of seafood or maybe from different places… Lets see how it goes… 🙂
