Baked fish in a jiffy

When you are married and both of you lead equally busy day at work, guess what could be the most painful  question of the day; What's for dinner ?

After struggling for years on this question I finally started to put my mind into answering this question. So here is what helps, spend 30 minutes to plan your weeks menu on the weekend before you do your weekly groceries. Hence there is no uncertainty every evening, you know whats cooking, you can rattle of 5 different dinner options on a Monday evening. Been doing that for a months now and what's for dinner has become what's for dinner darling?  

If you have a domestic help who can do some prep, cutting chopping, then the cooking bit is a breeze. However for days when Aryan is not getting his daddy time because daddy is in a office call it becomes difficult to stay in the kitchen and ignore a sleepy baby who wants to snuggle. The only thing you do is optimize and improve efficiency. Cook small portions, or bake in the OTG and also in the microwave etc etc.

Found a very refreshing dinner idea after browsing through the ocean of internet. Baked basa with mango salsa accompanied with baked sweet potato chips. You need the following:

Baked Basa
Basa Fillets
Mayonnaise
Crispy Bread crumb ( Home made)
Ginger paste
Garlic Paste
Onion Paste
Salt
Melted Butter

Mango Salsa
Ripe Mango
Tomato
Bell pepper
Onion
Green Chilly
Lemon juice

Salt  

Line a baking dish with aluminum foil  and line up the basa after cut into rectangular pieces and season with salt. Rub a pinch or ginger, garlic and onion paste on the Basa. Spoon in 1 tsp of mayonnaise on fish and cover the fish with breadcrumbs. Drizzle some melted butter on top for some added crispiness. Then bake the fish for 20 mins at 180 c or till they are flaky. I make breadcrumbs at home, I wonder why I bought them earlier. All you have to do is bake 4 pieces of bread at 200 for 4 minutes till they cool down and then run it in a grinder. Make them fresh whenever you need them!

Till the fish gets cooked chop up mango, tomato, bell pepper, onion, and green chilly and mix. Drizzle some lemon juice and season with salt. Place the salsa in the fridge and serve cold. Try and chop of the same size, it looks good and mixes uniformly.

Peel some sweet potato and cut them up as fries and blanch them in boiling water for a minute. Then drain it and sprinkle some red chilly power and salt and bake at 220 for 15 minutes. All you have to do is wait for your oven to say TING.

The combination of the delicate fish accompanied with the riot of flavour from the salsa and the warmth of baked potato chips is comfort food. I bet you are gonna go to bed happy and smiling, we did.

Don't ask me about the rice bit. Well we had rice for lunch and I did not refrigerate the leftover rice. So I stirred in some readymade puliyogare powder and it was magic. To conclude I can say that one cannot separate a Bengali babu from his rice and fish.