Good Friday = Fishhhhh

It was quite coincidental that I started blogging again during the Easter holidays and that my posts are therefore quite religiously oriented, but I guess that the underlying reason for this is two-fold. First that it's only during these holidays when I actually take a breath in and feel like I can do something other than pure academia and secondly, a lot of the religious fiasco involves food... hence my Good Friday ritual

Having eaten nothing all day, I come back after sitting in Church for approx 3 hours to fry myself some fish as my mother would always do. As ingrained as lamb is for me on Easter Sunday so is re-enacting my mom's delish fried fish what I look forward to after a day of fasting. The only problem being that the fish that we get back home is a lot harder to come by in the UK than I would have liked.

So, Thursday afternoon I headed to the Covered Market fish market to get me some, white fry-able fish. With my asking for a hake or kingklip equivalent, the man behind the counter smiled benevolently and said- I can give you hake. Pardon? (thrown off my guard) Yes- hake- just choose which piece you want...

Now as you all know in order to fry fish in batter, this requires a fish fillet- so I'm expecting him to offer me the cod or even haddock fillets that are right in front of me, but instead he points to a pile of darnes (I just looked this up now- it is a cut of fish on the bone with the skin still on). In my terror and not wanting to look like a lazy fool I point at two that I think I may be able to butcher into fillets later, pay and proceed on my way.

Until this afternoon when I return home salivating for my fried fish, chips and greens... I take the fish out and- as I'm sure most of you know- completely fail in my task of transforming the darnes into fry-able fillets. Instead I land up with two chunks and 4 smaller piles of what is probably white fish flesh that I've unsuccessfully tried to stick together.

Well, I think- at least there is the batter- maybe that might work

and here Jamie Oliver to the rescue with his brilliant Italian fish batter recipe which can literally save any disaster in the kitchen (and which I tragically can't find the link for online- the trick is to use sparkling water and olive oil in the batter with the flour and the egg yolk to make the batter)

By some utter miracle this managed to hold my poor butchered fish together for long enough to cook and actually look like the piece of fish it was originally meant to be and was actually quite delicious.

(The same cannot be said for the oven bake chips that in my laziness I opted for- rule number one is never to take the short cut)

So, all's well that ends well- I'm one less species of meat in the fridge and already salivating over the prospects for Sunday's lunch :)