Fried Food Friday!

My father has a weird look on his face...?

Friday was Halloween. My Pops called me, and asked if I wanted to go have lunch with him. I asked if he wanted to just come over and eat some lunch at my house. I had plans to make some fish and chips with some freebox wild, line caught Cod that I had procured the Monday prior. He agreed and said he'd pick up some other vegetable because he didn't want to eat potatoes.

I wanted to make a salad with some arugula and radishes that I'd picked from my garden, so I got to work making a nice hemp oil vinaigrette, and burnoised some carrots that were laying around. I cut the potatoes I had, and put them in some water to soak. After the prep was done, I got some oil hot in my big old Dutch Oven. Pops called me to see if needed anything, and told him "No." Even protesting some of the seafood options he listed off because they are not sustainable, such as stuffed Orange Roughy. I pulled out the Cod, and it was foul. Bad. Turned. No longer edible or servable. Fuck.

The General at attention

I called him and told him what was up. He headed over to the Central Market, and picked up some stuff before coming to my house. When he arrived, I had the batter all mixed up, and was ready to roll. He got about a pound of Cod, some Conch (!!!) and a broccoli crown. I got to work, cutting up the cod into pieces, tossed the potatoes in the now extremely hot oil, and started to batter some broccoli. The fries cooked really quickly despite being very thickly cut. 

I started doing the fish in batches, and quickly amassed a pile of fried goodness, that we would eat as soon as we figured out what to do with the Conch. Did I want to make cracked Conch, a process of beating the shit out of the stuff until it was flat, battering and frying it, or make fritters? Fritters it was. I quickly chopped some celery and bell pepper, tossed them and the diced Conch in the remaining beer batter, added more flour, baking powder and beer until the consistency was pasty enough to make a proper fritter, and spooned them one by one into the hot oil. Done. 

Right about the time we were ready to eat, my landlord, Kent, showed up. My father and Kent used to live together down the street at 32nd and Harris Park in the early 70's. Something that I didn't know until I lived as Kent's tenant for about two years in the front house. One day, my dad was over and I introduced them, and they were all like, "Ah, man, it's you!" Which freaked me out because we had found the place by walking by. Anyway, we asked if kent wanted to join us, and he did. 

Clockwise from the left: fish, conch fritters, fried broccoli, and fries

Golden fried deliciousness

I guess this isn't the ideal meal to serve two men over fifty-five, but whatever, none of us are going to live forever, and fried food is comforting. I arranged all the fried goods on a big plate, got some hot sauce, and honey mustard out and we went to town on the unsuspecting mass of battered, greasy goodies. Deelish. We annihilated everything. Yum. We didn't even eat the salad... so that's still around for me to enjoy at a later date. 

The End.