Ingredients
For the chips:
3 3/4 pints (2 liters) vegetable oil
2 pounds (950 grams) floury potatoes, like russets, peeled and cut into large chips
For the batter:
1 cup plain flour
1 cup beer
2 egg whites, whipped to soft peaks
Salt
4 (9 ounce/250 gram) fillets haddock or cod, skin on, and pin boned
Directions
Pour all the vegetable oil into a deep pan or deep fat fryer, and heat to 300 degrees F (160 degrees C.) Blanch the cut potatoes in the oil until soft, but not colored, about 4 minutes. Remove and drain.
Mix together the flour and the beer, then fold in the egg whites. Turn up the heat of the oil to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C). Dip the fish in the batter and fry for a few minutes with the chips until golden brown.
Drain on kitchen paper and serve with bread and butter, wally's (battered, deep fried pickles served with ranch dressing), and pickled eggs.
From Jamie Oliver that English poofter guy from the Food Network
18 comments:
Poofter? Jamie Oliver? Are you sure about that? (By all accounts I've run across, he's happily married and has two kids with another on the way.)
Speaking of meat loaf. Okay, I know it's OT but Troop asked about my mother's recipe for meat loaf on an earlier thread so I'm gonna talk about meatloaf 'kay?!
This is a little embarrassing to report but my mom was a very average cook. So the meat loaf though good was nothing to rave about. She did top it off with brown mushroom gravy. So that's a plus. If I told you the number of times she would prepare a dinner of london broil, mashed potatoes and string beans you wouldn't believe. Not that there's anything wrong with that meal, but over and over and over...and the thing is, my Dad really loved steak. London broil ain't no steak I can tellya. But being Jewish he didn't pick the plate up and fling it against the wall in protest: the gentile thing to do and the RIGHT thing to do in order to establish priorities. No. Instead we just had simmering tension at the dinner table, for months at a time. In my parent's first generation Jewish-American world you didn't explode. Cause if you did explode the cossacks would break down the door and that would be the end of everything.
Where was I?...
Randy all english guys are poofters. It's a rule like Irishman are drunks and all Italians are organ grinders. That's why the grab themselves when the talk.
It just the way it is.
Some Jewish cooking has a lot in common with Irish or English cooking. Everything is boiled or over cooked.
But I bet your mom could do a pretty good chicken soup. Everybody's mom had that one good thing.
Even her chicken soup was average. I think you mentioned thinking about listing a potato and something sandwich as comfort food. Well, my mom made an egg salad sandwich with bits of bacon in the egg salad that was delish. Ya hear that, Althouse?!
I think ricpic's mom and my mom had a lot in common. You see my mom wasn't such a good cook either. It was my grandmother who was the real cook in the family and I learned from her. My mom was of the "Betty Crocker" generation where everything could be quick and easy and modern. My grandmother made her own sausages and ravoli and even vinegar. I followed in her footsteps.
When I was about eightteen I took over cooking for the family. My wife doesn't cook. I think she only has cooked for me about ten times. Always the same thing. Macroni with onions and peas. I cook all the holiday dinners for the combined familys. And my granddaughter and the little kids all want to watch and help and learn. My mother and mother-in-law
offer helpful hints like "why are you wasting all that time hand chopping garlic, you can use garlic powder instead." That's when I give them a hot toddy and send them inside to watch the parade while the kids help me make the fresh pasta and homemade braciole and sauce.
*SO hungry now* Good thing I have a Valentine's dinner to look forward to. :)
And a man being able to cook, and especially wanting to cook is very sexy.
Thanks for sharing all of that, by the way, ricpic. My dad was the cook in the family. I can say that now that they're both in heaven and my mom would therefore take it well. Hee.
Oh, and of course you too, Trooper. I love your cooking stories.
I'm teaching my son to cook, and so far, he loves garlic and can make simple meals. He makes a really good cheese enchilada dinner with his own sauce made from tomatoes, garlic, onion and chiles. Delicious!
My two grandmothers were polar opposites in terms of cooking. My mother's mother was a Brit, and as such was a stranger to seasoning. The family joke was that she was given a pepper shaker at her wedding, and at her death many, many years later, it was half-full. Cuisine in her kitchens was usually some kind of boiled meat with boiled vegetables. Her husband was Irish, so as long as there was butter and salt to put on the potatoes and vegetables, he was happy.
My father's mother, on the other hand, was Hungarian, and had been a cook for a nobleman of some sort before coming to America. Her kitchen was a constant source of wonder, aromas, baked goods and remarkable meals. Comfort food is a gross understatement - some of her meals remain indelibly etched in my memory a half century later. She loved teaching her grandchildren how to cook, and every visit to her kitchen was a lovingly taught lesson.
Dang, I'm hungry.
Oh, Michael H, Chicken Paprikash is one of my favorite meals. If you had the real thing often, you were blessed!
I had a Hungarian friend who made a dish with bacon, and of course the fat too, cooked cabbage, butter, noodles, and some kind of cheese. It was delicious. I don't even want to think about the calories and fat.
Chicken paprikash! Oh God, yes. Wonderful. As is its watery cousin, goulash.
Calories and fat - my grandmother's favorite breakfast (after everyone else had been fed) as to toss a thick piece of home made bread into the bacon pan, brown it on all sides, then sprinkle it with salt and eat it.
She lived to be 96; passed away of probable Alzhiemers. No heart problems, though.
What I love the best is to go to an ethnic restuarant and taste a new dish. Then I would chat away with the waiters and sometimes the owner about the dish we just had. We might go to the bar and have a last minute drink and often enough the chef will come out and talk about his dishes. In a real ethnic restaraunt the chef is always very generous and will tell how he makes stuff because usually it is the signature dish of his country and he is proud of it. He doesn't give away any of his secrets but you get a really good idea of how to prepare it.
That's how I have learned to cook Brazilian, Chinese, Hungarian, Greek, Thai, Ecuardorean, Peruvian and Vietnamese.
Yum. Hungarians do like bacon! My friend's family would get together and have what they called a "Bacon Fry", where they would cook a big chunk of bacon and flavor everything with it. Bread, vegetables, etc. Wow.
You really are a true chef, Trooper.
No just a cook. A cook makes really good food. A chef wears a gay hat.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Oh. LOL.
I was going to cook dinner tonight, but Mrs. H is hinting that she'd like to go out.
I think we will, and it will be to a Serbian restaurant in an old building near downtown. The restaurant is run by two generations of Serbs, only one of which speaks English. Food from heaven.
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