Classic fish curry

The last three weekends have been roasts so time for a break from the meat.  My wife picked up the following monster piece of hake from the local fishmonger. I don't know why hake is so underregarded in Ireland. It's way tastier than cod, is easy to skin and bone and is reasonably sustainable and affordable. Ah well, mine and Spain's gain.

Gonna need a bigger chopping board!
Skinned, pin boned (using the perennially useful leatherman) and we're left with this

One of my earliest cooking successes was a Madhur Jaffray fish curry that surprised me by actually looking like one. And tasting not bad either. I can't remember the recipe but have made innumerable variants of it since, so here goes my bog standard curry recipe.
First of all, dry roast the garam masala.

Here we have bay and kaffir leaves, coriander, cumin, cloves, green cardamon, fennel and mustard seeds. I would have added cinamon and curry leaves but I appear to be out. Sin é. I roast them on the lowest flame for ten minutes giving them the odd shake and picking out some the chaff. Memo to self - go back to black cardamons as the green ones are way too fiddly to skin. Time for a glass of wine, a fine Georgian white from one of Fairview two excellent independent off licences (Martins in this instance, the other being Lilac wines) - Kinsale watch out, Fairview is on the up!

Decant the spices into the pestle and get the onions on the go.

Getting back to Madhur Jaffray, the one thing she really stressed was onions sweated for an eternity was the base of a good curry, so here they are after 15 minutes

According to Jaffray, the onions should slightly brown and just about to start catching. But people are getting hungry so this will have to do.
On the subject of Madhur Jaffray, before even Keith Floyd she was one of the first celebrity chefs for my generation.  And despite being a very personable and attractive woman, she did it before appearing on television. Donal Skeehan, take note.And on that note I vow to keep my highly photogenic family members out of this blog.
Now time to sweat the fresh aromatics (a scotch bonnet, a nondescript dutch chilli and a handful of garlic cloves - ginger and lemon grass would have been included if available) for a few minutes before adding the body of the sauce. btw, I owe Mr Skeehan an apology for singling him out, as the one programme of his I did watch converted me from my highly pretentious but incredibly time consuming brunoising of garlic to simply top and tail, crush, skin then rocking chop.  This will add whole days to my productive life, so chapeau.
Meantime, here's the remaining components of the sauce

  Spinach was defrosted then had as much water squeezed out as possible. Also added but not in camera were a bunch of dried prawns and some nam pla, resulting in possibly the least promising looking dish this side of chick liver pate at the food processor stage:

A bit of turmeric here would have helped, but my store cupboard management has been letting me down today.
Let it cook down for a bit, then after the rice is put on (basmati, washed and soaked for an hour, with pomegrate seeds added to perk up the flavour and appearance), add the fish.
Et voila!

Once again, no points for presentation, but dinner a three lunches taken care for so job done.