It’s been over two decades of our lives together but never has there been a time when we overspent while celebrating a family occasion including our anniversary. It wasn’t different this time either but we managed to make it a memorable one both for ourselves as well as our relatives and friends who attended the party we hosted.
This time we decided to forego meat dishes and focused solely on fish and it turned out to be a fantastic decision. I had ordered fresh fish home delivery in Thane from our favourite online fish retailer and as always, got top quality stuff in minutes.
We were lucky that our anniversary fell on a second Saturday this time and so on the day before, i.e. Friday, we decided to place the order soon after returning home from work.
We decided to go for the king of freshwater fish, Catla and were rewarded with a particularly large one that appears to have been at least 15 kgs when it was caught.
We bought the entire Catla and asked the store to keep the head as we did not know what to make of it. Our parents and relatives back in our hometown surely know how to cook great recipes with the head of the fish but we did not.
This was more freshwater fish than we had bargained for but we needed something different to offset the monotony that the huge Catla could cause.
That’s why we also decided to order fresh prawns delivery Thane from the same online store and got large-sized top quality prawns at great price.
An innovative way to use the huge Catla tailThe Catla is a wide-bodied fish and has quite a large-sized tail area that weighed three kilos, while the head that we gave away to the retailer weighed two and a half kilos.
Three kilos of tail was quite a lot of fish to process but I and my better half got down to work and after slightly boiling the tail, we managed to remove all the bones.
Now we had two kilo 750 grams of fleshy fish left to work on and kept it aside in the fridge. The fresh fish home delivery in Thane retailer had perfectly processed the Catla by removing all its scales and fins, which was a great help.
We were going to use this fleshy tail portion to make fish pakodas that would go for starters along with pakodas made from the fat and eggs of the Catla.
This was going to be an unforgettable fish safari for my guests and I just hoped that they would be up for it. That’s the reason we were trying to bring in a lot of variety in the dishes.
A three-course fish menu that blew my guests’ mindWe decided on three main courses beginning with deep-fried Catla and steamed white rice with greasy gravy to be taken with green chillies, which was optional. Those who cannot withstand the chillies can avoid it of course and few of the guests actually did so.
The next course was the traditional spicy fish curry with large pieces of the Catla to be taken with steamed white rice and this was somewhat conventional but enjoyed by everyone.
The final main course was going to be a special prawn biryani that we had learned during one of our vacations down south. We had ordered fresh prawns delivery Thane from our friendly neighbourhood online fish retailer precisely for this purpose.
Our guests were not just impressed with the menu but all of them thought that we have handled the all-fish palate quite wonderfully and now they too are thinking of trying it out.
We felt grateful that our palate went down so well with our guests. After all, this is how culinary variations evolve and add to the richness of food traditions.
We advised our guests to try purchasing fresh fish home delivery in Thane and elsewhere from reliable online fish retailers and get cost benefits as well as top quality stuff.
We rounded off our anniversary party with desi dessertThe food was just too good and everybody literally went all out on everything that was on offer and in the end each one of the guests agreed that they had exceeded their limits.
The cooking buffs among the guests were all praise for the quality of the Catla and prawns and I explained them about the online super store that sells fresh fish home delivery in Thane.
It was agreed that the dessert must be taken at least after an hour. We went out on a walk to get the food moving down the food pipe. Back home, the chit chat continued till late afternoon and soon it was time for the dessert and everyone was up to it.
The juicy rasmalai and rajbhog lifted everyone’s spirits and the sweetness seemed to have flowing all around our house.
For us, there couldn’t have been a better appreciation and gift for our anniversary than to have each and every guest praising our hospitality to the moon.
The Wall