Home-made fish and chips

Press, 17 May 1989, Page 12

Home-made fish and chips

Alison Holst’s

Food Facts

I have always cooked fish in many different ways, but I can remember my children going through the stage of wanting only fried fish, and considering the only suitable accompaniment for it to be chips. You may decide, if your family has very definite feelings on this matter, that the line of least resistance is to queue up at your local fish and chip shop, or you may decide to select the variety of fresh fish that you like best, and turn it into fish and chips, yourself. Think about the chips, first. You have several options, when it comes to making chips. (1) You can deep fry potato chips “from scratch.’’ This involves slicing then drying the potatoes, and deep frying them in very hot oil or fat. If you consider the price of the oil needed, you will probably settle for one of the other options.

(2) You can keep a large packet of frozen chips in the freezer and thaw and brown them under the grill. This is a sensible option, since it eliminates frying in deep

fat or oil. Follow the instructions on the packet, remembering that you can speed up the procedure by thawing the chips in the microwave oven. (3) You can modify the chip-making method, baking lightly oiled potatoes in a hot oven, then brown them under a grill (see recipe below). (4) You can saute sliced cooked potatoes in a nonstick pan, with a little

butter or oil. This is an especially good option if the potatoes are new. It requires' a fairly high heat, and a cooking time of 20 to 30 minutes, to brown several servings evenly. OVEN BAKED CHIPS Heat the oven to 230 C. Thinly peel or scrub the

potatoes, then slice them as evenly as possible, making them a little thinner than normal chips. Drop the pieces into a bowl of cold water as you work. Leave to stand in this until all the potatoes are prepared and the oven is hot enough. Drain then rinse the chips, and dry them as thoroughly as possible, using paper towels or teatowels. (Place the dried

chips in a roasting pan or sponge roll tin, with 1 Tbsp oil per’potato. Mix thoroughly with your fingers, so that all the surfaces are oiled. Arrange in one layer. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender. Turn on the grill, and brown the cooked chips as evenly as possible, under it. Serve as quickly as possible. Fried battered fish fingers. If you cut boneless fillets into fingers, you make the fish go further, there is plenty of crisp coating, and the pieces cook quickly. Everybody should be happy. For 4 servings 600 g fish fillets 1 egg y 2 cup beer or lager 1 Tbsp oil % tsp salt y 2 tsp curry powder (optional) y 2 cup flour Oil for frying. Remove the skin and bones from the fillets if necessary. Cut the fillets lengthwise into strips 2cm wide. Cut the long strips into shorter lengths, each

about scm, cutting diagonally, rather than straight across, since this makes each little finger taper at each end, looking rather like a small fish. Pat the pieces of fish dry on a paper towel. To mix the batter, measure the egg, beer, oil, salt, and curry powder, if used, into a fairly large shallow bowl. Mix with a fork, only enough to combine everything. Sprinkle all the flour over this, then stir again, with the fork, until there are no dry lumps of flour.

Do not start to cook the fish until the chips are ready. Heat clean oil at least smm deep, but preferably a little deeper. When it is hot, but not hot enough to smoke, toss the pieces which are to be cooked together, in flour (shaking off the excess) then dip each in the batter. The batter should

be thick enough to coat the fish thinly. If the coating of batter is too thick, thin the batter with a little more beer. If it is thinner than you like, stir in a little more flour to the batter. Drop each batter-coated piece of fish into the hot oil, taking care to have no water drop in too, and making sure that nothing splashes. Cook until the batter is evenly golden brown, 1 to 2 minutes. The fish will be cooked by this time. Put the cooked fish on paper towels in a warm place until all the pieces are cooked. Try to serve as quickly as possible. Serve with whatever your family consider essential, e.g. tomato sauce, lemon wedges, vinegar, and pepper. Do not use more salt than necessary. A raw fruit salad after this is easy, and makes it a fairly well-balanced meal.