Fish Ambul Thiyal: Chunks of tuna (not out of a can) slow cooked in a dark, tangy paste till almost dry. It was over this that we bonded. I suspected that the darkness of the paste was from kokum paste but the older gent didn’t recognize the name. Gorukka, he said. Eventually he went into the kitchen and then chef came out as well and we looked at pictures of kokum on my phone; and then she brought out a few pieces of what she’d used and it indeed looked exactly like kokum (a fruit in the mangosteen family that is used a lot in southern and southwestern Indian cuisines as a souring agent). More reading after we came home indicates that gorukka is in fact a slightly different fruit, what in Kerala is called cambodge; but as cambodge is very hard to find outside the regions in which it grows (I’ve only ever seen kokum in Indian markets in the US) I suspect that they’re using kokum as well. This is not very interesting, I know. The important thing is that it tasted good, though some of the pieces of fish were cooked a little too much.