Week 1: Famous Italian Chef menu

I'm over kitchen PTSD, mostly, and someone even mentioned that they read this blog! Amazing. 
Luckily I took notes as I ground through the course of courses. As the stress level mounts, these notes become more dramatic, to the point where names were changed to protect the guilty.


This week's tasks

• Eighteen hours in the kitchen.
• prepare mirepoix, sauté, cook beans for soup
• sauté branzino fillets for tasting
• make soupe de poisson from leftover bones from branzino fillets (staff meal)
• make vinaigrette (staff meal)
• make fish stock (branzino bones)
• de-bone branzino (fillets). 
• use Bermixer immersion blender to purée beans for soup. 

Filleting Branzino
Your best friend here will be a razor-sharp flexible fish filleting knife. You can buy these for a reasonable, even cheap price, from a restaurant supply store.

Start by cutting a bit diagonally toward the head, behind the pectoral fins, and if possible behind the ventral fin. Turn the knife and cut along the spine of the fish, working the blade against the bone to separate the fillet. When the fillet is free, turn it skin side down. Keeping the fish flat on the cutting board, work the knife under the skin at the tail section of the fish. Work the knife upward toward the head, scraping it along the skin.

This is a delicate thing, since if the knife is at the wrong angle you’ll cut the skin or waste product. It’s way too easy to waste some expensive fish.

If there are any bones, they will be near the head end of the fillet. Feel with your fingers, and cut them out by slicing a “V” in the fillet and lifting it out. Branzino bones are not removed with tweezers/bone pliers.

Peperonata prep: cutting Bell peppers
It’s impossible to create a regular 2” square from a pepper, especially the ones that look like they’re posing for Edward Weston. It would have been simpler to have the recipe state to cut the peppers into eighths or some other pepper-centric measurement. Cutting into 2” squares would have resulted in a lot of waste.

We got a pepper size clarification from the Head Chef, after an enormous effort to produce uniform 2" pepper squares per the recipe. If they’re over 2” you can cut them down. This is a rustic dish, so we could use the trimmings, too. Less waste!

Storing large quantities of fish
There are rules pertaining to what goes above what, arranged by highest cooking temperature on the bottom. Poultry, with the highest safe cooking temperature, is always at the bottom, then ground meat, then other meat. Fish is supposed to be stored separately from other raw meats.

The branzino fillets don’t go in direct contact with ice. The melting ice could make them too wet, even mushy. Instead, they’re laid out in a single layer on a hotel pan, covered with parchment paper, then a second layer, cover with plastic wrap. Count the number of fillets in the pan, and note this information on a piece of tape attached to the wrap. Place the pan in the coldest part of the walk-in (at the bottom).

The pans can be stacked 90° off so they’re not nested (if they settle, this could smash the fish). They can also be placed on sheet pans in the speed rack in the walk-in.

Farro
This is an ancient grain, something Cleopatra might have eaten. It's like wheat, only harder. Farro does not get soft quickly! After several hours of soaking - about seven - it had barely absorbed any water. We’ll soak the farro grains (whole) overnight for Wednesday and two days for Thursday.

Deboning chicken breasts
Chicken breasts, in culinary school, mean the entire part of the chicken containing breast meat. In other words, two supermarket breasts equal one culinary school breast.

They come on the bone in a case, and it's up to us to debone them. We get chicken stock from the bones and save money over ready-boned breasts.

This procedure is different from deboning breasts off a whole chicken. First, score the bottom of the breasts so you can separate them. Then, flip the product and break it down the center, crack!. Run your finger under the cartilage (this doesn’t always work so easily) to separate the meat. Then, slide your knife under the ribs, running along the bones to separate the meat. Trim the breast of fat as needed, place them in a hotel pan, wrap and put a count on them.

Mushroom Ragout
The mushrooms need to be sautéed before adding the other ingredients, so that they lose moisture. The whole point of a ragù is that it be thick, not soupy or saucy.

Once the mushrooms have sweated and reduced in size, the other ingredients (white wine, etc.) can be added.

Everything needs to cook down a lot, so use high heat. This is not a braise - the goal is to get the liquid out fairly quickly.

Our Menu

First Course: Fagiolo & Farro Soup with pancetta

Pre-soaked farro grains are cooked in pre-cooked, pureed fagiolo beans (beans, mirepoix, tomatoes, garlic, herbs).

This soup has a great, silky texture with a good bean flavor. I don’t know why we didn’t use cheaper, local pinto beans instead of expensive imported Italian beans, since they’re being puréed. It must be a Fancy Chef thing. It would have been interesting to reserve a few of the beans to see if their markings fade with cooking or remain. They really are beautiful when raw.

Second Course: Hand-made pasta. Nonna’s kerchiefs with mushroom ragout

Pasta squares, about 2” in diameter form a base for an earthy ragout made from an assortment of intensely flavored mushrooms.

We did not add any porcini powder to intensify the mushroom flavor. The pasta needs a very quick boil to remain al dente. We tried scraps, and kept them from sticking with a bit of extra virgin olive oil.

Third Course: Wild, line-caught fish

The fish turned out to be Branzino fillets, dredged in milk then polenta/A.P. flour/salt/pepper and sautéed. I find that I'm allergic to Branzino, but not enough that this prevents me from filleting about thirty pounds of the stuff. Mercifully, it does come pre-cleaned. The bones go into a cambro for stock and staff meal (I'm thinking French soupe de poissons for staff meal).

The fish will be served over pepperonata, a slow cooked mix of colored peppers, garlic, onion, bay leaf, salt, pepper and tomato. If I were home, I'd add some dried oregano, cook them in decent extra virgin olive oil until meltingly soft, then drizzle with a very high quality extra virgin olive oil at service. I'm not home. I do as told.

Cooking the fish is a very quick process as the fillets are very thin and will overcook in a heartbeat. Using breading slightly increases the cooking time, so you need to compensate, but it's all so quick that I never find out how much compensation was really required. By using a good quantity of oil in the pan and keeping the pan in rapid motion as you add the fish, you can keep them from sticking (this applies even more if no breading is used).

The polenta needed to be ground down in a vita-mix to make it less crunchy. Why didn't we just cook it longer? A mystery. Big Man does not like or encourage questions.

Fourth Course: Cruciferous vegetables

This is a carpaccio of thin-sliced kohlrabi, topped with watermelon radishes, coated with a vinaigrette. It’s garnished with fava & bull’s blood greens, Gorgonzola cheese and Maldon flake salt.

It's a beautiful presentation. Watermelon radishes are a great way to add interesting color to a plate, too. The cheese keeps this from going flat and adds umami.

Fifth Course: Almond tart

An almond tart with frangipane, cream cheese crust, and more cheese in the filling.

The idea is something about very local. So, Big Man had to drive to Nevada City to get the cheese. Clover -Stornetta cream cheese isn’t local enough? This is kind of funny, considering that we ordered the Gorgonzola and the beans from Italy. I’m confused about consistency, but if this is the way Big Italian Chef does it, then this is the way it must be done. Doesn’t anyone grow heirloom beans around here, make blue cheese, etc. Could this have been sourced totally locally to avoid inconsistencies? Will this question get me in trouble? Well, that’s the price of curiosity.

Some notes on Big Man. He's the guy who actually runs the kitchen. He's not concerned with fairness, hazing, nasty remarks. He's above the law, Mr. Life or Death. He'll yell at you about sanitation as he strokes his beard. At this point, he hasn't yet decided who he detests the most. He's not, ahem, seemingly in the best of health. Yet he manages to see everything that happens in the kitchen, somehow. 
.

Staff Meal Recipes

One thing we do in the Oak Cafe kitchen is prepare staff meals. I suppose this could be compared to cleaning out the refrigerator on a larger scale. The best situation is where we can find something left over from production - trimmings, a few peppers, an onion, some garlic, fish bones, whatever - and turn it into a meal worthy of a chef.

There are a lot of benefits to this. We reduce food waste, since all those limited quantities of food are eaten instead of thrown out. We learn to think on our feet, because the ingredients choose us instead of the other way around. We're thrifty, since expensive ingredients are generally taboo - although occasionally obligatory.

There's nothing wrong with any of this food. It's just that it's funny sizes or shapes, not enough to serve, or extra from a cooking class that didn't need that much halibut after all.

So, here's what I've done so far.

Quick French Fish Soup
We filleted several cases of branzino, leaving lots of bones. There was only one logical thing to do: make fish stock. Since we were already at it, why not whip up a batch of soupe de poissons?

Ingredients
- branzino bones and meat scraps from fish stock (fumet).
- leftover tomato juice
- garlic
- tarragon, fresh, chopped
- potatoes, fine dice
- fish stock (fish bones, onion, carrot, celery, garlic, parsley stems, bay leaves - we were out of thyme)

Process

1. Bring the tomato, stock, garlic and potatoes to a simmer in a stock pot or rondeau.
2. Take out the fish bones and run them through a food mill to squeeze out whatever meat you can. Don't go too strong, since you're doing this bones and all. Add the fish paste to the soup.
3. Use an immersion blender to purée everything in the soup pot.
4. Add a bit of brandy that you found in a bottle at the back of the liquor cabinet.
5. Add the tarragon.
6. Just before serving, add some pastis (or anisette, but be careful since this stuff is not as dry as real pastis).
7. This should be served with roux and croutons, but that's another thing with staff meals - they have to be done quickly without fooling around.

Cuban Poutine
We were doing a Cuban menu. We had bits of steak, trimmings left over from prep. There were a few jalapeños, and there are always onions and garlic. We had some badly cut julienned yuca fries, too. So, what if we sautéd the meat, jalapeños, onion and garlic, then added a bit of flour and oil to make a roux, then added some leftover papaya-mango-citrus juice to create a tangy gravy? Something we could then pour over the yuca for a kind of poutine, less the cheese curds (we didn't have any).

Ingredients
- scraps of beef
- garlic
- jalapeño
- cilantro
- onion
- flour (AP)
- mango/papaya/citrus juice
- oil

Process

1. Fry the yuca - like French fries with an initial oil blanch, then a second frying to crisp them up.
2. Sauté the meat in some oil. When the meat is showing some color, remove it and set aside.
3. Sauté the onion, jalapeño. Add the garlic toward the end, give it a few tosses and set it aside with the meat.
4. Add some oil to the pan, then add some flour, stirring constantly. When the roux takes on some color, temper with the juice, stirring constantly. Heat until the gravy thickens and the flour cooks.
5. Put the meat and other ingredients back in the gravy, give it all a stir.
6. Plate some yuca, then pour the gravy over it. Garnish with fresh cilantro.

Sautéed Halibut
There were two beautiful fillets of halibut left over from another class. This is one of those times where staff meal could use a premium ingredient. Since staff meal must be done quickly, the fish was left skin on, thrown into a pan where the skin would stick, then taken out with a spatula, leaving the skin in the pan. After you've made your quick pan sauce, some skin might still be sticking. No problem since a bit of water added to the pan softened it up enough for an easy cleanup. Skinning the fillets in advance would have wasted a lot of time, but cooking this way sidesteps the issue. If the fillets were patted dry, and the fish were scaled, the skin could have been fried crisp during the sauté process. But that would have taken more time!

Ingredients
- halibut fillet, skin on, rinsed.
- garlic
- dry white wine
- oil for frying
- salt, pepper
- freshly squeezed lemon juice
- cilantro, chopped
- parsley, chopped
- butter, melted

Process

1. Roughly chop some cilantro and parsley, squeeze with lemon juice and salt lightly. Set aside.
2. Trim out the fish into about 4 ounce portions, leaving the skin on. 
3. Heat a sauté pan, and when the oil is hot add the fish off the flame (in the interest of fast prep, the fish was not patted dry - if you add it over a high flame, the oil will spatter and catch fire)
4. The skin will stick to the pan. This was the idea, no worry.
5. When the fish is cooked from the bottom up, but not all the way, sprinkle some maldon flake salt on the fish and place the sauté pan under the salamander to broil.
6. Watch the fish - you just want a slight broil, not charred embers.
7. When the fish is ready, take a spatula and run it between the skin and the flesh leaving the skin in the pan. Set the fish aside.
8. Place the pan on the flame and add the herbs and white wine. Scrape a bit if you like. Add the melted butter, stir and strain the sauce.
9. Plate the fish either on the sauce or plate and pour the sauce over. Garnish with the cilantro/parsley/lemon and serve.

The meals of summer

Summer flows tranquilly along, a time of barbecues, fresh fruit, ripe tomatoes and corn on the cob. Yet, over the horizon lurks the next semester. One day it will dawn and summer will be over.

It's not like there was no culinary action here. Where my friends used to invite us for dinner, they now say they've got a super ingredient and can I cook it. This is a huge improvement over the days where I had to get the ingredients and invite them.

So, here are this summer's highlights. Some of these might already be in this blog.

- Swordfish with lemon butter and capers
- Seared wild duck breasts with blackberry gastrique
- Seared steaks with sauce Bordelaise, purée de celeriac
- Bloody damn steak, no side. Just meat and "Hatchelaise" sauce - Bordelaise meets Hatch peppers (and wine, of course).
- Direct Charcoal steak, pommes alumettes
- Seared 100% grass fed hanger steak, reduction sauce, garlic-potato cubes.
- Burger: 100% grass fed beef, garden tomatoes, rosemary sourdough, red pepper coulis, goat blue braised onions.
- Pan-seared lamb, rosemary-garlic avgolemono sauce
- Chicken tajine with olives and preserved lemons
- All-vegetable couscous
- Imam bayildi
- Garlic-eggplant chawan mushi
- Red pepper bisque
- Shrimp bisque
- Chicken mechoui
- Rosemary chicken
- Chicken breast in sauce verjus
- Spice basted country style pork ribs
- House ground porky bacon burgers
- Fish tacos, char-grilled marinated snapper & salsa
- Sautéed shrimp
Thin crust summer vegetable pizza
- Chicken tajine in sweet tomato jam
- Caprese salad
- Wild duck confit with garlicky potatoes
- Regular duck confit with garlicky potatoes
- Herbed duck fat popcorn
- Herb-grilled branzino
- Chicken and egg plant chow mein with black bean sauce
- Pan fried chow mein, summer vegetables
- Shrimp with watermelon
- Carnitas
- Chile colorado
 -Standing rack of lamb
 -Grilled lamb chops
__________

- Fresh fruit tarte
- Cake with fresh fruit coulis
- Chocolate-dipped strawberries
__________

- Four grain sourdough
- Rosemary whole wheat sourdough
- Focaccia
- Baguettes
- Whole wheat sourdough
- French style rye
- Morocan style bread
__

Swordfish with lemon butter and capers

Some ingredients aren't meant to be tasted; they're present to make other things better.

There's molecular gastronomy - where you might want to make a raspberry into a foam - and there's food science. I'm not a big fan of molecular gastronomy. Too many chemicals with names I don't recognize, things that I doubt are healthy.

Food science, on the other hand, looks at the interface between what's in the food and how we perceive it. So, how to improve on a recipe that I've been making for over twenty years?

The basic recipe is to take great quality swordfish, thick steaks whisked here from the most pristine water possible (no such thing as "pristine" but still...). The fish is seasoned with salt and pepper, then sautéed in vegetable oil, put aside before it's completely cooked. A pan sauce gets built with the fond: a quick sauté of some capers, white wine to deglaze, reduce, add butter then lemon juice, adjust seasoning, pour over the fish and serve.

That was my old recipe, from before I started reading about glutamate receptors and how to increase the perception of richness and depth of flavor. So, armed with a bit of knowledge (enough to be dangerous?) I began my mise en place. Celery paste, garlic paste, nuoc mam (nam pla) shiitake mushroom powder and shallots step into the equation.

The sauté process remains the same - that part is all good science, Maillard reaction, all that stuff. The fun begins once the fish is out of the pan, holding in the oven. Sauté the shallot paste, then the celery, then the garlic - deglaze with white wine, add a tiny dash of nuoc mam, throw in the mushroom powder, reduce, add butter, lemon juice, adjust seasoning, pour over fish and serve.

The result? Much richer, a sauce that segues from flavor to flavor, lingering. The trilogy of fish, wine and sauce works well, with nothing dominating.

So, here's the theory. The nuoc mam, shiitake powder and celery paste all supply glutamates that stimulate umami receptors in the palate, making the food taste more rich and savory. None of them were there to provide their own flavor - the mushroom powder and nuoc mam, in fact, were undetectable by mere mortals. It's all a question of proportion, like most things in cooking.

So, eleven ingredients for the sauce, but they definitely take the dish to a new level.

salt - flavor stimulant
pepper - flavoring
capers - flavoring
lemon juice - flavoring and acidifier
nuoc mam - umami (anchovy paste would probably work as well)
shiitake powder - umami
celery - glutamates, again - for umami
shallots - flavor
white wine - flavor, acidifier
garlic - flavor, and umami again
butter - mouth feel, richness

Of these ingredients, the ones you're likely to actually taste are the salt, pepper, capers, wine and lemon. The other ingredients are in smaller quantities and will blend in to support the dish without stepping up and screaming.

In through the Open Door

Do the words, "Berkshire Pork Fat Mochi" give you any instant cravings? Or do you wince in disgust, thinking that only a pork-addled fool would even consider ordering such a thing? I hope it's the latter, because that leaves more for me!

The pork fused with the mochi by some alchemical magic, creating a smoky, umami mouth bomb accented with confetti-like nori. That shishito is more for looks than heat, since this is December after all: the plants need heat for heat. Dribbled over and around this marshmallow-shaped ball of doctor-scorned wonder lies a light ochre sauce. Maybe it's miso based. Maybe not, but it's the grace note that really makes the dish happen. This is not a regular menu item, so if pork is your thing be sure to order some while you can.

The scene is the Open Door Restaurant, a tiny izakaya nugget encrusted in a thick vein of mini-mall. Their take on this cuisine is fusion French-Japanese-everything else. You might find bone marrow logs sliced down the center and roasted. Perhaps duck confit tacos. Maybe something involving foie gras, maybe paired with sea urchin. You never know, but the odds are that the dish will indeed work, no matter how strange it may seem.

Whatever isn't on the menu gets scrawled in multicolored chalk on a large blackboard. Right now, Christmas lights provide most of the illumination, so diners would cross the dark room, squinting, to find their amuse-guele nirvana. Like those pork fat mochi balls. Heaven.

Adventures with small plates is what this place is about. Go ahead, mix it up. Everything is à la carte. Take some risks. If you don't like something, odds are someone else at your table will. There are twists on Japanese street food. Truffle butter edamame, takoyaki, inari... but they're elevated to fine dining status by an inventive twist where a sauce drizzles in, an extra step is applied. Often they pair ingredients, juxtaposing something unknown to your typical Samurai with something his obaa-san would have served.

We typically start with our favorite sashimi, white fish yuzu. They don't specify the fish - a wise move allowing them to pick the freshest white fish for their menu without getting locked in to a particular variety. The plate is a simple fan of thinly sliced fish, dabbed with something green, drizzled with yuzu, accented with a shiso leaf and a pickled cherry. At least I think it's a cherry. It's red, sour, and has a pit.

Then something perhaps a bit bolder, building up to bigger flavors. Chawanmushi arrives in a heavy bowl heated hot enough to burn Asian symbols in your arm, the custard inside heaving like something from Yellowstone. Hints of fish and vegetables infuse the soft custard. Another bite, a piece of shrimp this time, another.... shiitake. Another? Nope. Empty.

More food arrives. Takoyaki: little balls of something resembling pancake batter, topped with a bit of sauce, bits of seafood inside. Spicy weiners, really spicy. Hotter than those shisitos. Then eggplant miso cools things down again with simple eggplant rounds tossed in some kind of miso-based sauce and sprinkled with roasted sesame seeds. Then the yaki onigiri, triangular rice balls, fried, sitting on a sheet of seaweed (nori), topped with ume (pickled plum), shredded salmon or nothing at all. Break off a piece of the rice, wrap it with nori and enjoy. Yes, you need to eat the nori or the thing will taste flat. Besides, nori is good for you.

They don't stop with the food, either. Japanese micro-brews? How about a beer made from rice, like a gently bubbling very light sake? It's here. If you can pronounce it, it's yours for the tasting: koshinikari echigo. Say it just like it's written and you'll do fine. Don't expect big, bold flavor. It's extremely subtle, light and ever so sake-like. Some fools have called it bland, but pair it with delicate food and you'll find that it's the perfect foil to something like sashimi where you don't want an Arrogant Bastard who will grab all the glory.

Or, if you'd like a white ale that's a bit more Belgian, just say Hitachino Nest White Ale, o kudasai. There's even a cute red owl on the label. Sugoi!

Yes, they have sake. Probably more kinds than the beer, so if sake adventure is your thing, you'll be happy. But you get more beer for your buck.

Service is very attentive, and they will happily tell you of their current favorite dishes. You could get a comment like, "not many people dare to order that." Don't worry - if you like the main ingredient, you'll probably love the dish. My wife still talks about that bone marrow log, months after the meal (it's off the menu now, alas).

They don't allow photos of their food. There's a big sign on the door, then a notice in bold on the menu. No photos of any kind, not even blurry low-light grainy out of focus horrors snapped by cell phones. I would think that photos posted all over the place would be free publicity, but since those photos rarely if ever look appetizing they may have a point. They didn't say anything about doing an illustration afterwards, so hopefully they won't send Hideo* after me for retribution.

The Open Door sits in the back corner of a mini-mall at Atlantic and Garvey in Monterey Park (on the southeast corner if you're approaching from the South on Atlantic). Their address is 122 South Atlantic Blvd, but that may not help much unless you're just using it to program your GPS.

* Neuromancer.

Branzino dinner

Amazingly, one of our local supermarkets had fresh, reasonably priced branzino. Better yet, this is a farmed, sustainable fish - called striped bass in English. For some reason, the Italian name for the fish passed over the French and English versions.

By encasing the fish in a salt-egg white crust, you can bake it without the worry of pulling fish jerky out of the oven 30 minutes later. All the fish's moisture will be sealed in. The crust is a mix of egg whites and Kosher salt: 3-1/2 salt to one egg white by weight if you're someplace humid, 3-1/4 salt to one egg white if you're somewhere dry. I start by weighing the egg white in grams, then multiply to find how much salt I need. Don't worry about saltiness - you're using the whole fish, skin on. The skin will keep the flesh and salt separate. Stick some fresh thyme and bay leaf into the cavity of the cleaned fish, place it on a bed of Kosher salt, make the crust with some more Kosher salt, place it in a 375° convection oven for half an hour, peel off the salt (the skin will come off, too), fillet the fish and serve. Simple!

The velouté sauce is a bit less simple: blond roux, mushroom stock, some vermouth, some salt, some Pastis, some fresh thyme and bay leaf, strained.

The Israeli couscous is also simple - sauté some garlic in oil, toss in the couscous, stir it a bit, add mushroom stock until it's absorbed and you're ready to go.

The persimmon mousse needs some work - it was good, but it needed more persimmon, less cream, and more gelatin. The sugar content was about right - not too much but enough to avoid going too acidic. Luckily, our neighbor gave us a lot of persimmons so I can experiment.

Buttermilk fish & chips

 

It was a dark but not yet stormy night. The storm was on its way, though. Rain was in the air as the trees bent in the wind. An ideal night for some comforting pub food.

This recipe started with an idea to use a thinner, lighter batter but still have moist, flavorful fish. I did not want to fool with beer batter, yeast, and a thick crust with a lot of flavor, since the goal was to bring out the fish's natural flavor and just use the batter for a bit of crunch and as a coating. The fish should be the star, after all. Instead, the fish is left in some salted buttermilk to act as a brine and get more moisture into the fish before frying. The buttermilk will also act as glue to hold the flour mixture onto the fish during frying.

I suppose I should mention that this type of cooking has an element of risk. Doing things the old school way is not the same as sticking things in a microwave and waiting for the "bing". 

Hot oil overflowing onto an open flame creates a grease fire - not a good thing, and definitely best avoided. This typically happens when your fryer has too much oil, too close to the rim. When you add the food, the moisture on its surface will flash into steam, creating bubbles. All those bubbles - combined with the food itself, will raise the level of the oil. If you have too much oil, it will overflow right onto an open flame (if you're doing this over a burner). Badaboom! Danger! No eyebrows! Always add the food slowly, even when you're certain that the oil level is fine. Dropping the food into the oil is never a good idea in any case, since hot oil hurts, leaves unsightly red welts on your skin and is overall bad form if you're trying to appear expert and cheflike.

Maybe this is a good time to check that you have appropriate materials on hand to extinguish a small kitchen inferno appropriately, too.

Never, ever use water to put out a grease fire! Remember the Wizard of Oz? Do you really want that fireball in your kitchen or in your face? No, I didn't think so. Water is heavier than oil, so what happens when you get a lot of it in the fryer is that it sinks to the bottom of the oil and flashes into steam, shooting burning oil everywhere.

If all this sounds too scary, maybe you should bake the fries and fish instead - but that's another recipe. This recipe is the real thing, hot oil, potatoes, fish. If the oven is too much a challenge, well, there's always frozen stuff and a microwave, the mainstay of cooking-challenged people everywhere - although at this point I'd rather brave the approaching storm and head for a local pub.

The Fish 

Ingredients

The Fish

• Black rockfish fillets, sliced into four inch chunks. Debone the fillets first (fish or needlenose pliers work great for this). You could also use some other type of white fish with firm flesh. If you opt for salmon, remember that your oil will be forever imbued with a good dose of fishiness. Remember to use sustainable seafood, whatever your choice!
• Buttermilk to cover fillets
• Sea salt
• Aleppo pepper (chile flakes)
• Black pepper

The flour for dredging

• All purpose flour
• Morton sea salt flakes
• A bit of kosher salt (since the flakes won't all stick)
• Aleppo pepper
• Black pepper

Process

1. Mix the buttermilk, salt and peppers together, pour over the fish, mix everything together so that each piece of fish is well coated. Place in refrigerator for at least two hours.
2. Mix the flour, salt, peppers together and set aside in a large mixing bowl suitable for dredging the fish.
3. Heat a suitable vegetable oil to a point where a chip (piece of potato) bubbles energetically when dipped into the oil. It doesn't have to be smoking, and it's probably a good idea that it's not.
4. Dredge the fish in the flour mixture, making sure that the pieces are well coated. When removing the fillets, shake them a bit to remove excess flour.
5. Your oil should be nice and hot at this point. Slowly dip the fish into the hot oil and let go. Don't drop it in unless you like oil burns all over your forearms. The fish will cook much quicker than the fries, so stagger the two processes.
6. When the fish is golden brown, remove it from the oil, turn off the heat and set it on a rack or screen to let the excess oil drip off.

The Chips

The chips should not come out of a large bag that's been in a freezer for an unknown amount of time. They should be cut from scrubbed Russet potatoes, sliced and done in a three step process just like in Belgium. No, they're not French. Just ask a Belgian if you don't believe me.

Ingredients

• Russet potatoes, julienned. If you have a mandoline, you can slice them quickly. If you're a gadget freak, you can get a gizmo that mounts on the wall and slices them just about instantly. If you have a really great, razor sharp knife you can do them all by hand.
• Salt, pepper for tossing on the finished chips

Process

1. Soak the potatoes in water, preferably overnight. If you're in more of a hurry, you can rinse the potatoes until the water is clear and soak them for less time. This is to remove excess starch for crispier chips.
2. About an hour before showtime, heat a suitable high temperature vegetable oil. Use a frying pan or fryer that's deep enough to cover the fries yet have ample room between the top of the fryer and the surface of the oil. The fries will bubble energetically when they go in, raising the surface of the oil so it's essential that this can all happen inside the fryer. 
3. Place the fries in the oil slowly. This lets you avoid splashing and consequent burns, and also lets you verify that you didn't put too much oil in the fryer. If the bubbles get almost to the top, save the rest of the fries for a later batch. 
4. Fry the potatoes until they start to get limp, not golden. That's the next step. Leave the potatoes to cool off. Don't worry about draining off excess oil at this point, since you're going to re-fry the chips anyway. Turn off the heat under the oil.
5. Before meal time, start heating the oil. Since you may need to fry the chips in batches, allow time for multiple fryings as needed (you can heat the oil for the fish so it's ready too - just be careful not to overheat it while you're doing the chips).
6. Fry the chips until they're just a nice golden brown. Drain off the excess fat.
7. Toss the chips with some salt and pepper and serve immediately. If all went well, you've also cooked the fish and everything is in perfect synchronization. 

Place the fish over the fries, garnish with a lemon wedge and dinner is ready. If you insist on being very British, make sure you have some malt vinegar on hand.