Shorshe Bhapa Maach

Shorshe Bhapa Maach – Bengali Recipe of Steamed Salmon in Mustard Paste: A mighty Salmon gravy with a traditional Bengali spin that makes the dish unique. This recipe requires a handful of ingredients, perfectly fit in your five ingredients recipe list, and the flavour is massive, as long as you don’t overcook it.

Regular readers know that our website dominates by the foods that we love to eat and regularly cook in our kitchen. Most of the time for our daily meals, we make Bengali and Indian dishes. Means curries, gravies, stews, Dals. And, over the years, I have made a conscious choice to cook our traditional bengali dishes with local produce that we get in Australia (VIC).

Is it all about gravy or fish?

Shorshe Bhapa Mach is synonymous with Shorshe Bhapa Ilish!

Shorshe Bhapa Maach – Bengali Recipe of Steamed Salmon in Mustard Paste

When the monsoon starts in West Bengal, every Bengali talk about Hilsa, according to Bengali, the queen of Fish. Social media feeds have been overloaded with Ilish posts in the last couple of years. Shorshe Ilish, Ilisher Jhol, Ilish Paturi, Ilisher Bharta, and whatnot!

It’s hard to prevent a family from going to the nearest Bangladeshi shop for frozen Hilsa that they import from Bangladesh. But this year, as we Melbournians are in stage four lockdown, we are not allowed to drive more than 5 km, so we couldn’t enjoy our share of Ilish!

Then, I decided to make Shorshe Bhapa Salmon instead of Shorshe Ilish! We subscribe to the idea that doing something is better than nothing. Why not? Salmon is a fatty fish like Hilsa, Shorshe bata Mach, or fish, which is also about gravy!

Just five Bengali pantry essentials in the right proportions- Mustard oil, Mustard seeds, Salt, sugar turmeric powder and plenty of green chillies all you need to make this utterly delicious recipe.

Secrets to make mustard sauce or Shorshe bata that doesn’t taste bitter!

Use the combination of black and yellow mustard seeds, as yellow mustard seeds have lesser intense flavour than black ones!

Soaking Mustard Seeds in hot water

The mustard seed has an acidic or sulphuric flavour. Soak whole seeds in salted hot water for at least one hour(better if you do it for two hours), and their presence will be subtle. Soaking them in hot water is the best way to extract the acidic flavour that makes the gravy bitter. Then, drain the seeds in a fine sieve. Wash them a few times; that way, you will get rid of the intense acidic flavour, and after soaking when we grind them, their pungent aroma reappears. It is the combination and flavour extraction process that make the dish unique.

It’s about steam cooking also!

Preparing for steam

Bhapa means steaming or steam cooking. The steam cooking technique plays an important role in our Bengali cooking. All you need is two cooking pots with lids. Usually, we use a steel tiffin box to prepare Bhapa recipes. But if you don’t get one and baking is a regular affair in your kitchen, use your metal cake pan and cover it with foil.

What to serve with Shorshe Bhapa Maach?

PLAIN STEAMED WHITE RICE is the only answer!

Shorshe Bhapa Maach Bengali Recipe of Steamed Salmon in Mustard Paste