One epic fail and two success stories. Luxury fish burger with battered chips.

Southwest veering north or northwest, 4 or 5.

Slight.

Occasional rain with fog patches, becoming fair.

Moderate, occasionally very poor, becoming good.

There is a reason scientists change only one variable at a time. If you have a working medicine with several ingredients but some worrying side effects, you change one variable if you want to overcome that problem. For example you take one ingredient and change its rotation from cis to trans. If you want to approach cooking from a scientific perspective, or are in search of perfection, you should do the same. If you cook like me, a mixture of knowledge, curiosity and happy go lucky....be prepared for some epic fails. An epic fail is when you have no clue what went wrong. And why.

I did set out to make a fish burger. I succeeded in making a good fish burger. Just not what I had in mind.

My fishmonger had yesterday monkfish cheeks. So I jumped on them. Skate cheeks (which I mentioned here) and monkfish cheeks are very different. Not only in price, in firmness, in taste, but also in size. If you look at the above picture, that is one cheek.

I never had a monkfish burger, but hey, who cares, it will be deluxe (changing one variable).  A so called filet-o-fish is a breaded fish. Breaded as in: dip fish into flour, then in egg, than in breadcrumbs.

There is certainly a time and place for this, but I thought that is not the right time. Too heavy. A monkfish needs a bit more respect. A beer battered fish as in “fish and chips”? Its a start, but not what I am after. Too light.

Now the Dutch have a nifty batter for their ”Kibbeling”. It combines the best of both worlds. You make a beer batter and add egg (separated) and oil and spices. That will do (another variable). Should the fish, before it goes into the batter, be sprinkled with flour? Yes? No? I decided on Yes (yet another variable).

Beer batter. What kind of beer? Anyway, I had no beer apart from Guinness and this is defiantly wrong. So I made Kvass from my dried out sourdough bread and used a 24 hour fermentation. Dont ask. But this is something I will explore further. The taste was good and it gave a nice batter (I don’t think the kvass was to blame, after 24 hours it is just slightly fermented, yeasty water).

So in order to get a very good batter you combine 2 tablespoons of plain flour with a pinch of salt and a pinch of white pepper with carbonated water/beer/kvass.  You should aim for the thickness of pancake batter. Let it rest for 20 minutes, so the flour and liquid get to know each other. As in here (thinking of my beloved foster daughter). Then add an egg yolk, 1 tablespoon of oil and let it rest and cool in the fridge. At the last minute beat the egg white, fold it into the liquid, add the slightly floured fish to it, coat, let drip and put into the hot oil.

I went as far as get to know each other. By that time I was dancing in the kitchen and mimicked “shall we dance”.

Its a bit difficult to dance in a small kitchen, pretending you have a big dress and watching oil heating up. Then I realised that I had only one egg and still wanted to do my home made tartar sauce. So I used the egg yolk for the mayonnaise and just added the egg white to the batter. What is the lack of lecithin in a batter between friends? Another variable gone.

Then the fish went into the oil. And the batter floated away. And while my lower lip started to tremble I realized that I also forgot to add the oil to the batter (last variable).

Never mind. The oven was hot, so the fish was grilled. With a faint whiff of coating. And it was fine. Not what I wanted, but fine.

But now we come to the two success stories. The first one relates to the bun I made yesterday

It was as fresh as having been made a few hours earlier, it was fluffy and the best burger bun I ever had. Honestly, do try the Tangzhong method on your burger buns.

The second one was a “spur of the moment” invention. While I was rummaging through my freezer today, I found 5 stray chips from this batch here (past stage 2).

Looking at my batter I remembered a strangely alluring sign in a chippie: “Battered chips”. So I thought: “What the heck, 5 chips are good for an experiment” and dunked them into the batter and deep fried them. They looked like long beignets when they were finished. And tasted like the most amazing love child between chips and croquettes.

Kvass battered triple cooked chips. You heard it here first. Move over, Heston Blumenthal.

So I had an amazing bun, filled with good homemade tartar sauce, some lettuce leaves and a tasty and succulent piece of oven baked fish. Supplemented with kvass battered chips. And the King and I. Some days you win, some days you lose. Today I won in regards to fun, happiness, joy, dancing and the experience of “ KVASS BATTERED CHIPS”.