what baby wants baby gets

i have a friend with a bun in the oven. i wanted to make dinner for her and her lil' bun.

i told her i had two russet potatoes and a bag of frozen peas but it was up to her to pick the protein.

her response, "i can do whatever, though i am shying away from anything that is cooked rare or medium rare right now as i find it unappealing. i'm also a little on the fence with fish, unless it is deep fried, in which case, i'm all fucking over it."

how's about fish 'n chips?

her response, "god i love you. fried fish is my passion right now."

hahaha! fish 'n chips it was!

i spent a few minutes surfing the interwebs since i'd never made fish 'n chips before and in the end went (mostly) with alton brown's recipe.

i stopped by klein's seafood after work and grabbed some cod. through my research i learned cod was the number one choice but haddock would've been the second choice. since klein's is tops they had delightful fresh cod.
here it is after i cut it into smaller pieces.



i rinsed and dried the fish, wrapped it in plastic wrap and kept in the fridge until i was ready to bread and fry. i whipped up the beer batter using a whole bottle of left hand brewing's sawtooth ale. alton suggested a "brown beer" but i thought a nice ale would be good. plus i wanted to drink the other five!

alton suggested safflower oil for frying but i didn't have any of that. i did have some butter flavored crisco though so i melted it down in the single woman's dutch oven. here it is coming up to temperature
(i was waiting for 350 degrees before starting the chips).



alton said to fry the chips in batches just for a few minutes until they were "pale and floppy." yikes! my preggo friend and i agreed that nothing pale and floppy sounded very good but we trusted alton so pale and floppy it was.



i drained the chips and let them cool to room temperature before bringing the oil up to 375 degrees and frying them again. once they were nice and brown i put them on a wire rack/cookie sheet in the oven at 200 degrees to stay warm.

next - the fish. here is my set-up.



i brought the oil back up to 350 degrees. i dredged the cod in flour before submerging it in the beer batter and then it went right in the single woman's dutch oven.



i turned the fillets often to be sure they were nice and brown on all sides. i drained the finished pieces on a wire rack before serving.

and here it is. my first go at fish 'n chips.



see those weird lumpy things to the left of the peas? those were my attempt at hush puppies. although the fish 'n chips were a major victory the hush puppies failed. i don't know. too corn-mealy. better luck next time on those i guess.

me, my friend and her lil' bun enjoyed this dinner while watching ninotchka. what a movie!! great garbo is my latest old hollywood crush. seriously, watch this film. it was excellent!