fish and chips

Goujons, by another name, 'pins' in French if you like, which I do not like so 'fish and chips' it is. 

When my father brought us to Denver the first place we stopped was a fish and chips shop on Colfax. Served on newspaper, the whole bit. The place is no longer there, but my brother and I thought at the time, "What is it about fish and chips with this guy anyway?" We'd rather have a burger. 

A while back, at his house, Dad said to me, "Hey, get that malt vinegar over here, will ya?" Always with the imperatives formulated as interrogative, as if he is giving me a choice in the matter, which never fails to piss me right off because I haven't the choice implied by a question. I must obey. [Hey, dewyawanna mow the lawn? Yawanna wash the car? Yawanna clear the leaves out of the gutters? Wanna shine my shoes? Hey, yawanna trim that 300 foot row of Russian Olives and mulch the branches? Yawanna yank that engine block and clean them pistons? "But, Daddy, I'm only in the second grade."  "Quit your whining!" Fuck.] At any rate, he has at least half a dozen bottles of malt vinegar among other types all crammed together in a cabinet stored improperly above a stove. Apparently he picks up a new bottle every time he gets the impulse to make fish and chips at home, which is another thing that is ridiculous. The boxes of mix that he buys with the malt vinegar for the specific purpose of fish and chips are nothing more than flour with bicarbonate of soda and regular salt. If he would only read a cookbook, look online, or read the contents of the box, he'd see for himself that it's all a sham. 

Fish filets are cut to size and dusted with seasoned flour. That same seasoned flour is used for a batter to coat the fish. The fish is dropped into hot oil and cooked. 

Potato wedges are cooked in oil on relatively low heat to cook through but short of browning. The potatoes are removed from the oil and cooled to room temperature. Later, the temperature of the oil is increased for the fish and to finish the potatoes. The potatoes are fried again to crisp their outer surfaces. This is termed the 'dehydration fry' but the wedges are not actually completely dehydrated. The wedges are soft and fluffy and wonderful on the inside, and crispy on the outside. They must be consumed immediately. No messing around getting people to the table and such because it's all downhill for the wonderful crispy VS fluffy textural combination from the moment the fries are removed from the oil. 

This will be the most amazing delicately cooked fish that you will ever have. The thing that is different here is this fish is still mostly frozen. As the batter begins to cook, the fish protected by the batter begins to thaw completely by suddenly being submerged in hot oil. As the batter becomes half-way cooked, the fish is just then completely thawed. As the batter finishes, }}} zing  {{{  so does the fish.

}}} ding {{{ Just like that, delicate as a butterfly landing on a flower petal, timed perfectly, finished together at precisely the same moment.  

Now I ask you, where are you going to see this daring approach?  You will see it among fish-lovers, I suppose. Everybody else are fish-abusers. But it is all that they know, these fish abusers, so they don't know that the thing they are knowing is overcooked fish. And if you disagree with me then you are probably a fish abuser too without knowing it. I imagine people live their whole life proclaiming "I really do not much care for fish," without ever realizing that they've only ever known abused fish.  

Today's batter is an experiment to demonstrate that using two forms of batter-lightening techniques together is not better than using just one. 

Beer is carbonated so adding it to batter in un-flattened form will lighten the batter considerably with the tiny carbon dioxide bubbles it imparts. 

Bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) in conjunction with an acid will also lighten the batter with tiny carbon dioxide bubbles. 

Using both of these together, beer and baking soda with an acid,  will produce a batter foam that will fry so lightly as to exceed optimum batter lightness, although not altogether repugnant. So let's see. 

I consider these potatoes small. But potatoes do come a lot smaller than this. 

The potatoes are rinsed to rid them of surface starch.

They are dried thoroughly to prepare them for submersion into hot oil.

The potatoes shown down there ↓and down there ↓↓ are completely cooked but they are not browned. They can be eaten, and they are fine, but they are not crisp.

They can be frozen at this point and they will keep perfectly well. They are fried again at higher temperature to partially dehydrate and to crisp the exterior surfaces. 

When I have fish like this in vacuum-packages, I get ideas. They can be cooked boiled-in-a-bag style just like this. This is the perfect situation for sous vide. If only they were marinated. But then if they were marinated I wouldn't buy them because I'd be denied the opportunity to make my own flavorings and I'd be stuck with something that somebody else did and with all their unknowable chemicals. 

A seasoned flour dredge is prepared with our own seasonings. Most of this will be wasted so season the flour heavily, but do watch the salt. The dredge will be used twice; first to prepare the surface of the fish  to hold onto the batter, and second for the batter itself. So double-duty here. If the fish were battered directly it would tend to slide right off once it is cooked, and we do not want that. 

I measured 1 + 1/2 cups of flour and realized that was waaaaaaaaa ---> a¹⁰y too much. It would have taken up the whole Newcastle and I had to save some, just had to, you see. So I scooped out about half of the seasoned flour, and I don't know what I will do with it. Probably waste it, and let that be a lesson. Maybe I'll save it. 

ARTS !

Look at the texture and moisture of that fish filet ↑.  LOOK AT IT !, I said.  

It's right at the edge of not being cooked. You never see that. Thirty more seconds and the fish would be overcooked. Just ever so slightly overcooked and still edible, of course,  not actually bad at all, but not perfect. This is perfection. And if you disagree with me then you're a h8r. 

The coating, however, is slightly overcooked and that is because the thermometer I rely upon is presently out of commission. The coating is also overly foamy. Too light. So, this shows, either use flat beer and baking soda with an acid, or use carbonated beer alone, but not both. 

Thermometer.  The battery inside the indispensable Thermapen gave up the ghost today and now I am Thermapenless, and lost, cast upon a sea of wildly varying oil temperatures with nothing to guide me.  That's a lie.  There are ways to gauge the oil temperature to a good degree of accuracy but I am too impetuous and impatient and boyish to use them. That is to say, stupid.  One can insert a wooden chopstick and observe the bubbles. One can drop a bit of batter into the oil and note how it cooks. Toss in a crouton and look! There are workarounds to not having an accurate thermometer but I was too distraught over the stupid little battery to bother with them, and this fish here suffered for it.  The battery is the tiniest little thing I ever saw apart from those hearing-aid disc batteries. It's named A23 12V and it's shaped like a normal battery except it is half the size of a AAA. And now I must locate a replacement.  I have these ↑, but they're next to useless. They only go up to 220℉ / 105℃.  At one time I owned five of these pocket thermometers and they never once agreed. One time I used all five simultaneously to carefully monitor a proofing box for sourdough sponge and one of them was so far off the average of the other four that in a pique of anger I hurled the offending thermometer against the wall which did insufficient damage so I stomped it to bits. That was in my 'acting out' days. But I've been totally over these pocket instant-reads ever since. They're hardly instant besides. They should be called 'eventual-reads' or 'approximate-reads' or 'I'll-give-you-a-guess-when-I-get-around-to-it-reads.'  They do make decent paper-creasers if you cannot find the one made of bone, very useful in the production of pop-up cards.