Fish tikka

Before you start

• marinate 1 hour ahead and no longer — the lemon and salt begin to cook the fish
• skewers, or a rack over a tray under a hot grill

Ingredients

Serves 2 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 450gfirm white fish — monkfish, cod loin or swordfish — anything that flakes early falls through the rack
• 100gnatural yoghurt — hung in a sieve twenty minutes if it is loose
• 1 tbspgram flour — besan, roasted dry first
• 1½ tbspghee or oil
• 1 thumbginger and garlic
• 2 tspajwain, kashmiri chilli and garam masala
• 1lemon
• 1 tspchaat masala
• 1 handfulcucumber and red onion

Method

6 steps

1. chop · 6m

   Fish into large cubes, then patted properly dry on every face. Wet fish and thick marinade do not stick to each other.

2. fold · 6m

   Roasted gram flour worked into the thick yoghurt with ginger-garlic, ajwain, chilli and a squeeze of lemon, then the fish turned through it by hand.

3. rest · 1 hour walk away

   One hour in the fridge, covered, and that is the ceiling. Left overnight the acid firms the flesh into something chalky before it ever meets heat.

4. grill · 14m

   Skewered with space between the pieces, under a grill as hot as it goes or on a pan hot enough to smoke, turned once and handled as little as possible.

5. grill · 4m

   Done when the crust is blistered and a piece pulled open is opaque to the middle and flakes cleanly rather than resisting.

6. finish · 4m

   Chaat masala and lemon over while it still hisses, with cucumber and raw onion beside it.