Ryba Po Grecku Recipe aka Fish in Tomato and Carrot Sauce (Polish)

Do you like fish?

I do. Quite a lot. I used to dislike it though. Except for this dish. This dish was always a favorite.

I used to be okay with eating fish as a kid until I remember seeing my cat choke on the tiny fish bone. I must have been 4 or 5 at the time. She was choking for a good 4 minutes and then she finally coughed it up. This scared the hell out of me and I wouldn’t eat fish after seeing my poor cat going through that. There is no way I was going to expose myself to a similar potential hazard. I don’t wanna choke and die. Such a sad way to die too, “She loved fish. She loved it so much she died choking on a small fish bone.” That’s just depressing.

In Poland, filets weren’t very common until later so most of the fish we bought were not filets. That means it was filled with little fish bones. The tiny ones you don’t even know are there until it’s too late. So that freaked me out and I refused to eat fish.

I always loved this dish though. Whenever my mom made it, I ate it. I was semi-freaked out each time and I chewed eat bite to a mush. Literally, I must have chewed each bite 100 times, just to make sure there wouldn’t be any fish bones in there.

This continued even when we started buying fish filets. I still had that thought in the back of my mind that the filets were not truly filets. And I would be the unlucky one to get the filet fish wit some bones left in there and I would choke and die. My anxiety is just great.

Thankfully I grew up and over this fear. I now don’t chew the fish 100 times. I’m way too impatient for that. After all this “Greek” Fish is just so delicious I can’t help myself but chow down. I’m not really sure why this dish is called Ryba Po Grecku (Greek Fish). There really isn’t anything Greek about this fish. The sauce is made primarily of carrots and tomatoes. It is deliciously savory and sweet at the same time.

The great thing about this is that you can use any white fish for this fish dish. My mom’s favorite is the orange roughy but we used some Russian fish for this particular one. She didn’t get the name of it but I liked it; the fish fried very beautifully and tasted really nicely. You can experiment with different white fishes and figure out for yourself which one you like the most.