Beer Battered Fish and Chips

Aside from the quesadilla, we also prepared Beer Battered Fish and Chips for Noche Buena. My sister loves fish and chips, and because it's an English food, I decided to put it in our menu just so I could include a part of K in our Noche Buena.

Recipe for this came from one of the early episodes of "My Favorite Recipes," featuring chef Aileen Anastacio as its host. The WMN.ph website is now closed, but good thing I copied the recipe in my notebook... I could still share the recipe with you guys.




Beer Battered Fish and Chips
{serves 5 - 6}

Ingredients:

• 1 big fillet of Cream Dory
• 1 cup evap
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup cornstarch
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1/8 teaspoon ground pepper
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 cups cold beer
• store bought French Fries
• oil for frying
  
• lemon slices or wedges (for garnish)

How to Cook:

• Cut the fish into pieces, according to your preference and marinade in milk for about an hour.
• In a bowl, combine flour, cornstarch, cayenne, paprika, pepper, salt and baking powder.
  
• Gradually add the beer and whisk. Do not over beat.
• Coat each fish slice with the batter and deep fry in hot oil.
• Serve with cooked French Fries and dip of choice.
  

Points to Consider:

• The batter has to be really cold and the oil has to be really hot. If your batter isn't cold enough anymore, pour some cold water or put some ice cubes in a basin (or anything bigger than the batter bowl) and put the batter bowl on top of it.
• You can prepare your own French Fries, but if you want to save time, you can buy those pre-cut potatoes. For this one, we used Frenchies fries in sour cream and onion flavor.
• As for the dip, you can use the basic aioli sauce.

I asked my sister to prepare the batter, and when we tasted it after pouring the beer, it was really bitter. It was our first time to prepare this dish in our kitchen, so sister prepared another bowl of batter minus the beer. She cooked some of the fish coated with the beer batter, while the others were coated with the plain batter. She also sprinkled some panko breadcrumbs before frying the fish because sister prefers her fish and chips with breadcrumbs.

Comparing two different fish pieces, the one with the beer batter tasted better, although the one without tasted okay, too. Now that we know we can cook this dish at home, we see no reason why we can't have this in our dinner table whenever we crave for it.

*** Jenn ***