In keeping with the slovenly theme of the day, an easy dinner seemed called for tonight. So, to that end, I made my homemade fish burgers. Well, I suppose you'd call them burgers, although to be honest I prefer to have the fish in baguettes or similarly crusty bread rather than flabby (typically stale) burger buns (sorry British readers - burger 'rolls'). What I do is flour, egg and crumb pieces of white fish*, fry, and tuck the pieces inside crusty bread with plenty of garlic mayonnaise and some crunchy iceberg (much like Nigella, I'm an unashamed iceberg fan!). Easy! But the trick to making this a really great meal is to flavour the crumbs (which have to be either homemade, or if you're lucky enough to have access to them, panko crumbs) with garlic, parsley and sometimes parmesan (which makes the crumbs deliciously crispy) and/or lemon zest. You can make your own garlic mayo, and I often do, but on a day like today I just add minced garlic and parsley to good-quality (read: free range egg) bought stuff.
So there you go. Easy, delicious and waay better than popping out for a takeaway burger!
*For those who are interested, I used whiting fillets tonight. I'm sure the following will horrify any British reader, but I am not at all a fan of the beloved cod that is everywhere here. It's completely unsurprising that cod stocks are perilously low - you can't get away from the damn stuff, and for the life of me I can't work out why the British seem to love it so much. It's bland, watery, expensive and generally not fresh when you buy it. Whiting is about half the price of cod and we found it infinitely nicer - reminiscent, in fact, of the wonderful blue cod we used to get back home in Invercargill.
Oh my goodness, this sounds like my perfect burger! I'd never considered making them myself. I'm a bit funny about buying and cooking fish - I don't know enough about it. Having said that, I have mastered a magnificent (even if I do say so myself) bouillabaisse! Does the whiting have bones? I heard far too many horror stories about fish bones as a kid and now I'm petrified of them, especially those tiny little ones.
ReplyDeletehaha, I can never enjoy herrings etc for the same reason. I'm sure you can just eat their tiny bones, but the thought of choking is too scary! I believe at some point whiting does have bones, but the fillets I bought were definitely bone free. I don't know what kind of fish you get in Australia - back home I used to make this with gurnard or terikihi or even warehou, but you guys have fantastic fish, so I'm sure there would be a suitably inexpensive white variety. I used to be horribly intimidated by all the different varieties, but now I just ask the fishmonger - they're really helpful and generally actually do know about the fish they're selling.
ReplyDeleteTell me more about your bouillabaise!? Do you do the whole rouile thing (not sure about the spelling on that) as well? Mm, I love stewy-soups like that - chunky, rich, fragrant...YUM!