Jihva for Coconut - Fish Curry

This is one vegetable technology hasn’t improved. I’ve seen vacuum, hand-held, electric – but nothing as effective nor easy to use as the coconut graters of our childhood.
Sit on the floor, rest your knee against the wooden base the lever and grater are affixed to — turn the lever on the right and the rotary grater on the left scoops out the fleshy part of the coconut held over it into zillions of soft, white snowflakes. Even the kattipeeta (the traditional implement used to cut/slice vegetables – usually a curved blade attached to a piece of wood), which ends in a sharp, serrated disc of steel meant for the coconut is not as effective.
That being said, I must say that when Ashwini announced Jihva for Coconut, I had to rack my brains long and hard to come up with an entry. For me, my fascination with coconut lay, and still lies, in the grater I described, the spray of fresh white against newsprint – but apart from the coconut-red chilli-tamarind chutney and kobbari louzu (coconut-jaggery balls) that used to be made at home, I don’t remember other ways we used it, perhaps to thicken a meat gravy? I’m not sure.
When I grew up and got interested in cooking, cookbooks made using coconut an often tiresome and doubt-ridden process. When it had to thicken a curry, the grinder never seemed to do its job properly, at whatever speed, pulse, frappe, whip, beat – the ‘paste’ would end up a loose mix of water, bits of chilli, coconut that refused to grind — and imparted an overwhelmingly coconutty taste to everything it was used in. I don’t think we used coconut milk at home, ever, so which cookbook was right? Squeeze the grated coconut with bare hands, put it in hot water and whiz it in the mixer, thin milk, thick milk, second extract, first extract? So out the coconut went, out of my kitchen and now and then makes an appearance in milk carton form, whence this recipe originates.
Fish curry
Seer fish: ½ a kilo - skinned, boned and cubed
Onions: 3 small, chopped
Thick coconut milk: 1½ cups
Dry red chilli, ground: 6
Pandan leaf: 2
Basil: A little
Cinnamon: 2-inch piece
Curry leaves: A few
Turmeric: A pinch
Fenugreek: ¼ tsp
Ginger-garlic paste: 1 tsp
Limes: 1-2, juiced
Salt: To taste
Put in everything but the limes into a pan and cook till the fish is done. Once it cools, add the lime juice. That’s it, you’re done!