If You Have to Eat Fish . . .
Food is my enemy. It’s an ongoing war and I lose every battle – even with fish!
Every year Alan’s colleagues give him at least a dozen bottles of wine, and occasionally, other liqueurs – and my task becomes one of disposing of it in a useful manner. The obvious solution to most would be “drink it” but that would be too easy. We don’t drink much in the way of alcohol. Water and coffee are our beverages of choice. A nice margarita made with a sugar-free base is great on a summer night, and we generally have a glass of Zin, or Sangria when we eat out, but neither of us appreciates the fine points of wine. We don’t sniff, or swirl, or spit. We assume it won’t poison us and just take a swig. There are three categories, “I like it”, “I don’t like it,” and “It’s ok.” [Sorry, Gary - but I love your book!!] We did hit one bottle of “Oh my God, are they trying to poison us?” which Alan actually swallowed and I did ran to the sink to spit out. I should note that he didn’t die.
After our uncomplicated tasting process, I figure out what kind of final product would use it as an ingredient. We don’t eat much beef either so the heavy reds do become a problem. I should have some pretty nice vinegar in another decade or two hiding out under the cobwebs in the back corner of the basement. Yes, I know I can add “mother” and get it faster, but what fun would that be? This is a case where the trip is more enjoyable than the destination – as is so often the case in life.
In an effort to use up a bottle of liqueur that was a bit too tall to fit anywhere comfortably I discovered the right way to make Friday night dinner. As it turns out, the secret to the best tasting fish-and-chips style fish in the whole world is Sogno di Sorrento Mandarello, imported from Italy @ $30 a bottle.
Here’s how it works: I use a two-stage coating. I batter first then dip in a dry mix. My starter mix for both is a combination of white flour and yellow corn flour with a bit of baking soda and a tiny bit of salt. We generally just buy Big-Y’s mix to save time and mess, and they use the same ingredients plus one or two things I can’t pronounce that, I guess, keep it from caking. A purist would leave those out. Our personal preference is to use minimal salt and no refined sugar or corn syrup, and no pink, blue, or yellow poison packs. The whole point of cooking one’s own food is to adjust to personal taste so experiment. That’s half the fun! If you’d like a bit more sweetness, I’d suggest adding a packet of Stevia to the dry coating mix.
The secret to making the wet batter is to use the wonderful Italian mandrian orange liqueur. It adds perfect acidity, flavor, and an unexpected silkiness to the batter. If you’re even blinking at the cost, consider how much you’d pay for mediocre fish that someone else made. For the two of us, one bottle of liqueur is sufficient to prepare 8 meals – or about 2 months worth of fish.
For the second stage of the coating, add unsweetened flaked coconut to the dry mix at an almost 1:1 ratio. I like a nice thick coating so I keep the batter a bit on the thick side and pat the breading in well. Make sure your oil is hot. The secret to keeping grease out of fried food is hot oil. Cold oil soaks in. As soon as you lift it out of the oil, wrap it in paper towel to absorb any access oil. I’m not going to pretend, or imply, that this is broiler level healthy but I pretty much established that in the first line.
There are always tricks one can use to make things go farther and/or be healthier. The trick with this would be the less surface area, the less batter and breading you’ll use, and the healthier it will be. Making the batter a bit more fluid, and just dipping into the dry mix without going to great lengths to make sure it’s all patted in nicely will also make a thinner coating, and healthier meal. To make this as cost effectively, and as healthy as possible, keep the pieces of fish large and the coating thin. We don’t do that.
We consider the coating to be quite enough in the starch department so the only other thing we serve is fresh baby green spinach done in a frying pan with a tiny bit of olive oil, Victoria Station dried garlic slices, and fresh-ground multi-pepper mix. If you want a sauce, I find that a ginger based sauce is perfect. This is so yummy that you can dump the fish out, use the sauce just on the fish, which has picked up the flavors of the coating, then eat the breading by itself. It has something of an orange-coconut cookie quality that is nearly addictive.
Oh, and that same liqueur is made in a cream version which I serve in tiny little cobalt blue, with yellow inside, cups that I found at Ocean State Job Lot. They probably hold about 2 shots each. If I’m not planning to head back to my computer after dinner, I’ll indulge. While I haven’t tried it yet, I’ll bet it would go great over a bit of orange sherbet.
