A movie and lots of fish...

Last Friday I saw another one of Miyazaki's films Laputa: The Castle in the Sky - its interesting how much they grow on one. Of all his movies I had seen Princess Mononoke the first and found it a bit too opaque for my liking. It took me time to figure out that the world of Miyazaki's movies are like none other in their complexity and beauty. Pirates who chase you turn out to be good friends and robots find peace playing with squirrels. Among the other movies created by Miyazaki I have seen are My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service and Spirited Away. My reactions to these movies ranged from really really liking Totoro in a slightly mystified kind of way to adoring Kiki. So much detail and so much simple humanity is difficult to find in most of the films one sees.

Now to the fish... Well a group of us got together and decided to eat fish for dinner on Sunday. It ended up being half shrimp and half fish but we still had a lot of fun trying out old fashioned home-like Bengali comfort food in all senses of the term. We had fish "chops" (like croquettes but more complicated), shrimp steamed with ground mustard and green chilies, shrimp cooked with coconut milk and fish mouli (sort of stew with onions and milk and yoghurt and coconut milk with a lot of aromatic whole spices). By the time we had eaten we were all stuffed like teddy bears and lolling around on the carpet, making bad jokes about the effects of eating too much. Really we have to do this again. Oh and Gati - if you are reading this - how about some of the recipes on your blog???