Friday 12 October 2012

Vegan MoFo VI, Day 12 - British Food Friday - Fish and Chips

It's British Food Friday!

I really struggled with what to make tonight.  I didn't want to make another sweet thing because we've had sweets in the office every day this week and it's reaching the point of overkill.  I was waffling between pot roast and fish and chips because that's all I could think to make.  I dug out a couple of pot roast recipes and realised that most of them were for crock pot roasts, which would take 4+ hours to cook.  I'm not spending 4+ hours on dinner on Friday night.

I finally decided to make the Fish and Chips (kinda) from Quick and Easy Vegan Celebrations by Alicia Simpson.  As you might recall, I tested for this book a couple of years ago.  Well, this recipe wasn't on the tester list, and for some reason I kept passing it over when I flipped through the book.  I honestly don't know why because fried fish is one of the few pregan things I still miss.

Of course, when I finally went to start cooking, I realised that the light above the cooker is now out - the day after we got the other light fixture replaced.  I very nearly decided to just say "fork it" and make some Fry's chicken nuggets for dinner.  But I powered through the annoyance of my hateful kitchen and made the seitan.

I was really unsure about this - you cook it in a smaller-than-usual pan in not very much broth.  But it actually turned out really well.  Unfortunately, it wasn't particularly fishy, but it was still really, really tasty.  Also, I have to say, the coating was more Southern than British (even though this is a St Patrick's Day recipe).  Again, super tasty, but not quite what I was expecting.

I couldn't be bothered making chips from scratch, so I bought the non-coated chips at the store.  Yes, most of the bags of chips I looked at were battered or otherwise coated in some way.  I just wanted straight-up chips, so I went with the bag which had an ingredients list so small (potatoes, sunflower oil) that it took me about a minute to find it.

I made a quick and dirty tartar sauce from some smoked garlic mayo, lemon juice and minced capers (I don't do vinegar on my fish).  It all worked really well together, and I'd definitely recommend it!

I will eventually do that pot roast, but maybe at a weekend.

No comments:

Post a Comment