Kaffir Lime salmon

 

My grandmother was a chef par excellence. However, as is the norm with most Indian grandmas, she didn’t pass on any recipes.

That is the weirdest thing about history of Indian cooking. Few, if any, ever handed down recipes in written form. It could be due to the fact that most women those days were not literate. In one movie that I had seen based in early 19th Century Bengal, an old lady, referring to an educated young widow, actually tells another young newly wed that any woman who learns to read and write becomes a widow at an young age (Chokher Bali by Rabindranath Tagore, directed by Rituparno Ghosh).

 

It was always word to mouth, almost a form of folk lore, and that too often polluted by myriad interpretations by those who helped pass on the recipes. It’s only recently that recipes are being written, discussed and taught. However, many of the authentic dishes have been completely lost in the folds of time, taken to grave by their creators or given complete makeovers by the inheritors fortunate enough to take notes from the master herself.

Bengali cuisine perhaps has been more guilty of this than any other. Back in my childhood days, we kids often hung out at the dense yards which looked more like a forests of trees with fruits and flowers. Vines creeped out of every nook and corner that one could see, ageless trees swayed and locked their arms with their nearby neighbor, blocking out the sun on most days.

One of the trees in that small forest like garden was a lime tree, that we call ‘gandhalebu’ – meaning a lemon with aroma. But this lemon has an aroma, a fragrance, that is unlike any other. It will draw you to itself like a juicy bone draws a dog’s nose from miles away. Unfortunately, this ‘gandhalebu’ never seemed to have made it out of the Eastern part of India. I have never seen or even read about it in trillions of food blogs and posts that come up in google searches.

Kaffir Lime leaves have a similar kind of strength in their aroma. It’s not same as ‘gandhalebu’ but the strong, unique aroma can rouse an appetite from the dead. While my quest for our desi ‘gandhalebu’ continues, I experiment with kaffir lime leaves and salmon.

It’s a winner. Succulent, delicious, flaky, brilliant. Plus super healthy, does not not have any oil in it whatsoever, and it’s baked.