The Seafood Walk

Me,I have a thing for seafood.Just crazy about it.Might have lived on an island in my last birth.What can be better than loving something so much and knowing that it's also great for your health thanks to its content of omega 3 fat (that's good for the arteries)? When I saw that Rushina had announced a Seafood Market Tour,I was game.I do know a little about buying fish thanks to market trips with my parents.This time it was Sandeep Shreedaran,a marketing professional with a great interest in cooking who was teaching us.

He spoke of white pomfrets and black pomfrets,prawns (three varieties),bombay duck and mackerels.He also gave us ideas to cook them

In an inimitable style,he went about bargaining and ultimately bought the fish.Just when I thought we'll get whacked for the price quoted.Quite a performer,hahaha!

We bought some prawns,squid and rawas.

He quickly showed us how to clean squid and suggested we buy the smaller size one.Squid requires cooking for just 2 mins.....else 2 hours,if it gets tough!

We spotted Sole....a fish commoner in the West....see above...has a pinkish hue

There was a shop selling dried fish...shrimps and bombay duck.Smelly,if you ask me but my friends absolutely love it.

Amazing what sizes of fish we saw at the Citylight Market.

One of the features to look for is the bright red color of gills.The other is the look and feel of the fish.

One fisherman sold freshwater fish such as Chitol (as shown above)...a rare spotting,mind you.This has lots of bones which have to be removed before making dumplings called Muitha and serving them in a gravy.Other fishes were Bekti,Rui and Catla,much loved by Bengalis.

After the shopping, we set off for a quaint seafood restaurant "Fresh Catch" at Mahim which also cooked for us the seafood we bought besides the delectable crab soup that welcomed us.

Prawns,Mackerel,Rawas,Squid and Crab...we had it all!

The curries were amazingly seasoned,specially the bright red Ambotik which looked hot but wasn't so and had an unusual flavor cos of Triphal.

What I enjoyed about the tour was not just the seafood but the company we had....here we were from different professions all meeting with a common love for food.Got to meet the Iranis,an endearing travel writer couple.Samar Gupta,the brain behind Trikaya Farms was a great conversationalist.Thanks to him we now know of all exotic vegetables like Brussel sprouts,Fennel,Pok Choy,Rocket and are able to include them in our daily lives.Anshu had a keen interest in the environment and we hope to have more conversations about that in the future.Salonee who works for Rushina is well known on the twitter circuit and I finally got to meet her.

Rushina Munshaw-Ghildiyal, I must say, impresses me with her unique ideas for classes and tours.She started Masala Trails which takes you around vegetable markets and follows up with a vegetarian meal.She followed the seafood market tour with a seafood cooking class at A Perfect Bite Cooking Studio the next day,which included how to cut fish.........wondering what will be next :)