Fish Fingers

Another recipe from the Mark Hix book we’re currently reviewing: British Seasonal Food. The beginning of the November chapter is mostly concerned with mushrooms, particularly lovely-looking chanterelles, then moves on to slow-cooked meat recipes, with a couple of dishes using smoked fish too. And then fish fingers. I’m not sure what makes fish fingers fitting for November, but it sounded like a great idea so we went with it. The recipe suggested haddock, but the haddock in the shop didn’t look that great so we got cod instead. Line-caught of course, which makes it more sustainable, but we still felt a bit bad about it.

This is one of those things that really just needs to be an idea more than an actual recipe, such is its simplicity. Cut some fish into fingers, then dust with flour before dipping into beaten egg and coating in breadcrumbs. Then fry. The recipe said to fry in a heavy-based frying pan in a thin film of oil, which is what we did, but I think the ones in the picture in the book must have been deep-fried or at least contained turmeric or some other colouring in the crumbs because they looked a consistently lovely and golden orange, whereas ours didn’t. The other thing that the recipe didn’t point out is that the fingers will be a lot shorter when they finish cooking, so if you want nice long fish fingers then cut your fish longer than you think it needs to be.

However, the proof was in the eating and they tasted delicious. A lot like fish and chip shop fish actually, despite the fact that they were in crumbs rather than batter. We did attempt to make proper tartare sauce to go with them, but much like last time we did so, it didn’t emulsify properly; tasty but too runny. For my last mouthful I added some Halen Môn spiced sea salt and it was brilliant; I wish I had tried it earlier. Next time we make this (I am sure there will be a next time) we will try adding some spices to the crumbs and see what happens.