ONE simple, tasty and extremely satisfying meal I have had and will always remember is during a monsoon gone by at my mother's home in Pune. The cuisine was Mangalorean, the menu was seafood, the cooking done by my mother herself over wood and coal fires in a kitchen that was happily traditional.

As a cold wind swept through the house and a driving, slanting rain hammered down on the roof, she roasted a fistful of salted and dried Bombay Duck over coal and served it to me with a plateful of red, parboiled rice and an ordinary yellow dal.

I'm afraid, no chef on earth would pass this as gourmet food for sure, but that simple meal did something for me that I'm certain no fine wining and dining experience could match. It satisfied the soul! Yes, as I crunched into the crisply-roasted bombil, or Bombay Duck, the smoky flavour of the coal fire mingling with the salty taste of the fish, I was aware of a sense of deep contentment at this home-made meal. I became conscious of the small pleasures and simple joys of life and since then, dry fish has always been a special food with me.

I like the principle behind fisherfolk preparing for the monsoon. The idea that because there is going to be no fishing during the months of rain, they dry, salt and store seafood to consume and sell to people who cannot do without it when there is no fresh catch of the day. I look out on my travels for signs of these preparations in fishing villages along coastal Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, especially in the entire Konkan belt right down to Bombay.

I search for fisherwomen in small fishing villages spreading out fish to dry and catch the last days of the summer sun. And I like to see the Bombay Duck hanging on wooden frames along seashores, like air-drying ham in some Southern American countries. I watch how shrimp of various sizes are spread out on mats in narrow lanes of fishing villages and on busy, dusty main roads. And how bigger fish like the Rawas and King Fish are slit open and dried in cane baskets right outside the fisherfolk's homes.

I observe truckloads of this salted and dried fish then being carted away from the fishing villages just before the onset of the monsoon and I know, that the fish markets will be full of them soon. Yes, dry fish is sold in fish markets round the year, but the activity sort of picks up in May. My mother makes her purchases at the end of summer and this is stored in her larder for the real rainy days. The shelf life for dry fish is a year, but I doubt any family keeps it so long, the consumption at home is so high during the monsoon months!

The fish that primarily get salted and dried for the monsoon are the inexpensive kind. You won't find the Pomfret and the Mackerel ever getting stored away in this fashion. Nor the lobster and the crab and the jumbo and tiger prawn. It is not only difficult to salt and dry these varieties, but pretty unreasonable too: there are enough takers for this class of seafood when the catch is fresh. And they move quickly in most seafood restaurants. So why store it!

But the Rawas, the Bombay Duck, the tiny, medium and large-sized Shrimps, the Silver Fish, these are inexpensive. They are also the common man's food and the kind of fish that lend themselves admirably to preparations after being salted and dried. It is this fish that get salted and dried for the monsoon. Exciting Para is made out of the Rawas and sometimes also the Mackerel in chilli, vinegar and garam masala, and a Balchao in Prawn with garlic, pepper corns, dry red chillies, salt and perhaps a little Goan cashew feni!

The curing process for fish is no trick at all. Salting the fish before it is put out in the sun hastens the preservation of the flesh and helps in the drying process. All the water oozes out and the fish is prevented from decaying. The fisherfolk engaged in this business check the drying fish regularly, they turn it over in the sun, and at night, they take it away and store it somewhere safe. The drying period depends on the size of the fish. The Bombay Duck takes between four to six weeks, the shrimps take maximum three weeks. But this has to be done in May, when the sunshine is extremely hot and heavy.

The storing of this fish is also important. In most homes along the coast, where there are granaries and rooms meant to store copra and arecanut, the dry fish is stored in tins or cane baskets. But I have seen the fish also stored in dry banana tree bark in some homes. And at others, especially in Goa, the fish is tied in a bunch and hung up over the fires in the kitchen. The heat from the daily cooking keeps the moisture and flies away from the dry fish.

Salted and dried fish does not require any extraordinary spices in the cooking stage. Basic masalas, lots of onion, tomato, turmeric powder, green chilli, ginger-garlic paste, sometimes methi leaves, are used. The recipes are simple, but spicy. Either onion and tomato or coconut are used as a masala base for most preparations. There is no fresh coconut during the monsoon, because nobody climbs the coconut trees, so copra is employed in the recipe.

And dry fish recipes, if you really go to see, do not make very fishy dishes. The fish content very often is so meagre, that you have to hunt for it in your food. The idea is just to present the flavour and taste of fish during the monsoon, not a full-fledged seafood dish. That's why there is a high spice content in most dry fish recipes, so very little fish is required in the cooking. And you savour the dish like you would a good pickle, perhaps, which is had with every meal, but sparingly.

I have been asked why seafood speciality restaurants do not list dry fish on their menus during the monsoon and off season as well. The truth is that dry fish has a place, and that is on the home table. Not in a city restaurant. In seafood eateries, dry fish would not move. And even if the odd diner did ask for it, the frying process in which the overwhelming aromatic flavour and taste of the fish escapes out of the kitchen and invades the restaurant would invite criticism from the vegetarian guest. Better to have your dry fish at home.