Fish & Chips

We were blessed to be gifted some fish and potatoes, caught or grown by a good friend of Mr. Steady's.  We are not huge fish eaters but I typically buy the same couple of types (tilapia, cod, and salmon) and I typically bake it when I do serve it.

Our friend gave us walleye, pike, and perch.  My dad loves fried walleye so I decided to dig out the deep fryer.  And as long as you're frying fish, you might has well make some fries too, no?  I hopped on my trusty friend, Pinterest, and got some "Pin"spiration.

First up I found Nan's Batter for Fish.  It was a simple, straight-forward recipe that had ingredients I already had, flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, oil, and water.  The recipe said it would work for about 1 1/2 to 2 pounds of fish.  I had no idea how much fish I had so I just doubled the recipe.  It was the perfect amount and I had enough left over to slice up two onions and make onion rings with the batter.

 The french fry recipe I found was Coleen's Recipe for Excellent French Fries.  I looked at a lot of different recipes, some said you had to parboil, some required coatings of ingredients I didn't have.  This recipe was potatoes, water, cornstarch, and salt.  Easy peasy.  The recipe said to soak for at least an hour, or overnight if possible.  But I had made some oven fries earlier in the week that had you soak for 10-30 minutes so I decided to give a shorter soak time a go.  I ended up soaking for 30 minutes and they were perfect.

Mr. Steady offered to manhandle the deep fryer because I hate using it (I hate making bacon too because of all the grease that splatters).  I think he and I ate as much fresh out of the fryer and we did at the table!  We don't spend much time in the kitchen together.  I always say we have a two-bottom kitchen and often the boys beat him to the punch.  But we had so much fun just chatting and catching up on our day.

Both recipes turned out fabulous and the onion rings in Nan's batter were out of this world - I think that was everybody's favorite!