More deep frying: Fish and Chips

September 15, 2013

Menu

Fish and Chips

Steamed Local Sweet Corn

Bella Sera 2012 Pinot Grigio

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Recipes

Fish and Chips from Cook's Illustrated

David Lebovitz's Chocolate Chip Cookies from Serious Eats

---

I suppose it was inevitable that we would have fish and chips for dinner. For many years we never ate fish at home, only when eating out. Fish and chips, eaten with large quantities of ketchup, was my favorite piscine meal. Now that I am trying to have more fish at home and I am doing some deep frying it is only natural to make the quintessential English fast food.

Because of its much better selection, I went to Whole Foods to buy the fish where I found "Alaskan True Cod Fillets MSC CE Wild Fresh". I asked for a thick piece and was satisfied with the 0.8-pound fillet that I received. This turned out to be a good amount for a dinner for two. The coating on the fish came out great, light and crispy with no tendency to fall off of the fish. The fish itself was cooked perfectly: hot, flaky, and tender. The cod didn't have a lot of flavor and we both had it with some ketchup. The traditional condiments are malt vinegar and tarter sauce but we had neither, we don't really eat enough fish to justify buying either one.

The fries/chips were good but not as crispy as hey should have been. We had fresh local sweet corn as we are nearing the end of the season and wanted to take advantage of what corn is still available.

Speaking of chips, I tried a new recipe for chocolate chip cookies. The dough for these is rolled and refrigerated before baking which is convenient. Each roll makes a dozen cookies so it was convenient to freeze three of the four rolls of dough so we can have fresh baked cookies on four different days. The cookies are good, though there are more nuts in them than I would have liked, they detract from the chocolate. My favorite chocolate chip cookies remains the version from the New York Times but I will continue trying variants in search of the perfect cookie.