Pisces Restaurant at Hotel Sriram Residency Udupi

Last weekend we spend in Udupi, the temple town in Karnataka District. We stayed in Hotel Sriram Residency for two days and to be frank the stay wasn’t so pleasant as we expected. Hotel Sriram Residency is one of the hotels in the very heart of the Udupi city. It is located just opposite to the Udupi main post office. Even though the stay was unpleasant, the food which is served in one of their restaurants was excellent.

Hotel Sriram Residency has two in-house restaurants, Pisces – a non-vegetarian restaurant and Achinta- a pure vegetarian restaurant. We tried different dishes from both the restaurants and what I felt was Mangalore cuisine has so much similarities to the Kerala cuisine. Variety of fish delicacies are there in the hotel menu since Udupi is in the coastal belt. Rice and fish is their main item for lunch and dinner.

Puli Munchi, a hot and tangy fish delicacy prepared by Mangaloreans. Puli Munchi is normally served with boiled rice. If you are fish lover, no doubt that Puli Munchi will become one of your favourites from Mangalore cuisine. Puli Munchi is almost like the Kerala style mulaku curry. Usually King Fish/ Seer Fish, Sardine, Mackerel, or Prawns are used for making Puli Munchi. 

Hot garlic prawn fry.

Usually there are 3 varieties of fish fry. Naked fry, Masala fry, and Rava fry. I tried all the three and liked  Masala fry the most.

Kozhuva naked fry.

Rava fried Ladies finger fish

Masala fried Silver Pomfret

 

Peas and Cashew nut pulav. It was a very rich and delicious main course item. None of the side dishes goes with this even though I tried Curd Raitha, Puli Munchi, pickle, etc. with it. The Chef has added cashew nuts, peas and ghee lavishly to entertain the taste buds of me. 

Deep fried Ice-cream. Ice-cream balls covered in bream crumbs and fried in oil and served with grated cheese, tutti-frutti, cherries. It was for the first time in life I am ever tasting a fried ice-cream. It was an excellent dessert item. I actually I wanted to go for a repeat but my stomach didn’t let me do so. 

Puli Munchi recipe from the restaurant

Ingredients:

• Fish pieces cleaned and washed – 6 (Seer Fish/ Prawns)
• Small onion – 5, julienned
• Kashmiri Chilly – 5-6  ( Bydagi or Charadan mulaku)
• Coriander seeds – 3/4 tsp
• Fenugreek seeds (Uluva) – 1/8 tsp
• Cumin seeds (jeera) – a pinch
• Mustard seeds – 1/8 tsp
• Turmeric powder – 1/8 tsp
• Tamarind – 1 tsp
• Ginger –garlic paste – 2 tsp
• Curry leaves- few
• Oil – 4 tsp
• Salt to taste
• Freshly chopped coriander leaves – 1 tbsp

Method of Preparation:

• Soak the tamarind in hot water for half an hour and extract the pulp.
• Dry roast the chillies, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, cumin seeds, fenugreek seeds and turmeric.
• Heat little oil in a pan and roast the onions, ginger-garlic paste.
• Grind dry roast ingredients, oil-fried onions, ginger-garlic paste with tamarind pulp to a smooth paste
• Heat the remaining oil in an earthen pot and fry curry leaves and when it stop spluttering add the ground paste, half cup of water and salt to taste and bring it to boil
• Reduce the heat and arrange the fish pieces in the gravy and cook for about 10 mins
• Check for the salt and garnish with freshly chopped coriander leaves

Puli Munchi is ready and serve it hot with boiled rice.