This is One Way to Fry Fish.

I may have mentioned this before:

Just about everywhere I’ve worked has had some sort of major equipment or supply shortage for one reason or another. Learning how to deal with this is probably the most useful thing I got out of learning how to cook at Baltimore International College. With the exception of the showroom kitchens - which had fancy looking equipment, but far too many students to offer all students a chance to learn how to use them - most of the kitchens I studied in while I was attending BIC included rows of metal tables with countless duplicates of the stove from your first apartment in between. This meant we had to improvise a fair amount of the time - Instead of a temperature controlled deep fryer, when we had to fry something we would just fill a Brazier (note: do not confuse with Brassiere, please. Think of the children.) with vegetable oil - turn on the heat - and either flick some water into it, or stick a wooden spoon handle-down into the grease to see when it was ready. Forget Blenders - we made Hollandaise the OLD FASHIONED way - aka the way you NEVER make it in a restaurant unless you want to be bounced out the door. Part of me still thinks “Holland-aise” should be mayo with weed in it - do you see what I did there?

… anyway, This has helped me do a bit of home cooking from time to time. Fried Fish or Fried Chicken is a whole heck of a lot easier to make with by just placing a generous layer of oil down the bottom of a wok and frying it that way, rather than using a snazzy contraption you just bought out of sky mall.

So, I’m gonna walk you through my favorite recipe for Fried Fish - but the breading method I’m about to mention can be used to bread just about anything.

In the case of this recipe I’m not giving specific amounts. The general rule is to make sure you have enough of each ingredient to cover whatever you’re battering - and to avoid clumps of batter in the individual ingredients.

Pan-Fried Tilapia

Ingredients:
Tilapia Filets
Flour
Eggs
Panko Bread Crumbs
Salt, Pepper, Spices.


The Process: 
Prep:
1. Arrange the thawed Tilapia on a plate or in a shallow vessel of some sort. Pat dry with a paper towel.
2. Pour a generous amount of Flour into a flat, shallow vessel such as a cake pan or hotel pan.
3. Add the Salt, Pepper, and Spices to the Flour.
4. Do the same with the Bread Crumbs.
5. Crack a few eggs into a bowl and whisk them together. Pour the eggs into a Cake Pan or Hotel Pan.
6. Arrange the Ingredients as Such on the counter:
    Tilapia - Flour - Eggs - Breadcrumbs
7. Place an other empty vessel at the end to hold the battered fish.
    Tilapia - Flour - Eggs - Breadcrumbs - Breaded Tilapia
8. Take a piece of Tilapia with one hand. Place it in the Flour.
9. Using that same hand, pile some flour (covering the Tilapia) on top of the Tilapia. Pat gently.
10. Pick up the Tilapia - with the same hand - and gently shake off the excess flour.
11. Place the Tilapia in the Egg Mixture. Pick Up, Flip Over. Shake off excess egg mixture.
12. Using your OTHER hand, place the Tilapia in the Bread Crumbs. Pile the breadcrumbs on top (covering the Tilapia) and pat down in a fashion similar to what you did with the flour.
13. Pick up, place in the empty vessel.
14. Repeat until you have breaded all of the Tilapia.

Cooking:
15. Fill the Wok or Frying Pan about 1/3 to 1/2 full with Vegetable Oil, Corn Oil, Peanut Oil, or Soy Oil (or any combination thereof)
16. Turn on the Heat to Medium / Medium-High.
17. When you stick a wooden spoon into the oil and bubbles come up rapidly, your grease is ready.
(alternatively, you can drop a small amount of batter  - or flick a very very small (like, 1 or 2 droplets) amount of water into the grease to see if its ready. If it sizzles, it is.)

18. Gently place the Breaded Tilapia Filet in the Heated Grease. Use a metal ladle to ladle some hot grease on top of the Tilapia if it is not completely submerged. If necessary, flip after a few minutes.

19. Cook until the coating turns golden brown. In a fish this thin it really shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes.

20. Remove from Oil, Place on a paper-towel lined plate to drain excess oil.

21. Plate & Serve.

22. CONSUME.

How to Convince People that Crabs are Food

Gripe Gripe Gripe…
Irony is a complex and often misunderstood concept. There’s rhetorical or literary irony - like me saying “voting republican sure would help the economy” which fits Bender’s definition of “The use of words expressing something than their literal intention;“ and situational irony - say, having your expensive high class wine ruined by a common animal - you know, the proverbial black fly in your chardonnay (for all everyone complains about that song - Alanis is technically right)

I bring this up because there’s a certain level of situational irony in the whole New York City crabcake situation. There are very few places that I’ve found since I moved here that really make a decent Maryland crabcake - quite often they’re loaded with imitation crab meat, or needlessly gussied up to attract pretentious food snobs and allow them to use adjectives like “Abundant” or “Cromulent” or whatever the hell they’re talking about.

I say this is Ironic because one of the principle complaints I heard while attending culinary school in Baltimore was how underdeveloped the palate of the average Baltimorean is - if anything ever needed spicing up we’d just dump Old Bay all over it and call it a day. One of the more ’hardass’ chef instructors even went so far as to ban the spice in his kitchen. In all fairness, the reputation for a lack of refinement is well earned - The incoming freshmen that I had the pleasure of cooking for in my A la Carte class constantly ordering well done steaks and iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing kind of sort of proves their point…

…but it is not an excuse for NYC - which purports to be America’s food capital - to be so lacking in a fundamental American regional cuisine. Sure, Maryland isn’t exactly well known for its cuisine, but what they do right they … well, do right (sorry, I’m bad at adjectives.) Come on, New Yorkers: If we can get everything from authentic Italian to Senegalese and Vietnamese food right, Someone should be able to take a 4 hour drive to Baltimore to get it right.

(Okay - that’s not entirely fair Samantha’s Southern Cuisine about a block from my apartment at Fulton & Grand Ave. in Brooklyn does a pretty mean crabcake for a decent price)

But regardless, I’m here to help anyway! (Because I can’t resist the opportunity to butt in where I’m clearly not invited)

So, anyway, here’s how you make a crabcake:

Ingredients:
8 oz. Crab Meat
Claw is decent if you’re on a budget; If you want to be flashier about it get some lump or jumbo lump
1 c. Panko Bread Crumbs
If you don’t want have Panko, use ¾ cup regular bread crumbs.
2 eggs
Old Bay
To taste
Salt & pepper
To taste
½ C. Mayonnaise
¼ of a small-medium lemon
½ tsp hot sauce

Procedure:
Squeeze the lemon juice into a mixing bowl.
Add the mayo, hot sauce, and old bay
Add the 2 eggs
Mix until smooth.
Fold in crab meat, bread crumbs.
Portion into 2 to 6 equal sized crab cakes. (2-4 oz. cakes)
Place on a greased baking sheet
Sprinkle with extra old bay if you’d like.
Bake in a 400 degree oven until done (7-10 minutes for the smaller, 10-15 for the larger)