Fish curry – one of my favourite dishes and as long as it’s done right (not too spicy) your kids will love it too. Once you’re good at it, you can take as little as 30 minutes to prepare it. Most places outside will do fish head curry, but it’s not always easy for us to buy fish heads for our curry, so I normally end up using fish slices.

As I mentioned in the video, this dish probably has more vegetables than fish. Lots of tomatoes, some eggplant and lady’s fingers. Onions are optional. The fish is marinated with curry power and fried separately fish. I always fry my fish because the fried surfaces tend to pick up and hold the flavours of the curry better. The rest is easy. Just put it all together and simmer. I often use yoghurt for this curry, but you can also use evaporated milk. I never use coconut milk – that’s reserved for curry chicken.

Do try this at home. It may be quite a hassle initially, but once you’ve got the hang of it, it should be wonderfully easy. Cooking is a skill every Singaporean should acquire. Once our population hits 6.9 million and all our hawkers are foreigners, you’ll be thankful that you can cook.

© Chan Joon Yee