Name: A Dish of Crisp Little Fish
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: United Kingdom
Ingredients: ¼ lb (120 g) cooked shelled prawns or the flesh of ½ shelled lobster; 4 very small mackerel; 2½ cups light batter for coating; 4 small whiting or flounders; Oil; 1 lemon, cut in 8 thin slices

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

English Provincial Cooking

By Elisabeth Ayrton

Published 1980

About

This dish was often served to visitors to the Isle of Wight in the nineteenth century. It was accompanied by thin slices of brown bread and butter, watercress and English sauce (hollandaise) and never by chips or any form of potatoes. The fish should be mixed and traditionally includes a few prawns or pieces of lobster.

Ingredients

4 small whiting or flounders
8 small herring
4 very small mackerel

Method

Clean the fish and remove the heads and tails. Pour the well-mixed batter into a shallow dish and lay all the fish in it, turning and rolling them gently until they are thinly coated all over. Do the same with the prawns or lobster but keep them separate.

The fish can be deep or shallow fried as preferred, but oil must be used as butter does not give sufficient crispness, Put the fish i