Fish and Chips

Tonight we had fish and chips for dinner. We had earlier bought the Dory fish at Carrefour together with some frozen potato chips and garden peas.

The vegetables,(sliced carrots and peas) were boiled separately.

Batter:

I have simplified the fish and chip recipe in the "Good Cooking" magazine I collected as a student.

I fried the chips first and drained the oil using some kitchen paper.

To prepare the batter:

2 tabsp rice flour
3 tabsp wheat flour
a sprinkle of salt
a sprinkle of black pepper powder
1 tabsp cooking oil

All the above ingredients are mixed in about 2 cups of water to a consistency of thick cream. Rest for 30 minutes. I added the rice flour to make the batter more crunchy. You can, if you prefer, fold the batter into whipped egg whites of 2 eggs.

The Dory fish was thawed and all ice removed. A kitchen towel was used to absorb excess water on the fish. The fish was dipped one at a time in the batter before being fried in hot oil. The oil has to be hot so that the fish does not stick to the frying pan.

The fried fish and chips were eaten with the boiled vegetables and mayonnaise and chilli sauce were used as dips. The British do not eat fish and chips with chilli sauce. They prefer adding lemon juice or vinegar, if I remember correctly.

If you are in the UK or US, you can get frozen fish in batter plus frozen potato chips readily available. All you have to do is buy them and fry them yourself. Eating hot fish and chips on a cold winter afternoon is a soothing to the stomach. However, the last time I was in the UK in 1997, we had a hard time finding chilli sauce and only tomato ketchup could be found. We finally found Lingham Chilli Sauce at Tesco.

I did not eat the fried fish and chips in the US because they put beer in the batter.