My American husband and I of varied cultural heritage (all of which speak the Queen’s English), both identify ourselves as English-speakers. But that doesn’t always mean we speak the same language. While I have learned to use spell-check to maintain American English on my site, there is no such feature for what comes out of my mouth. Certain words sometimes trigger the biggest arguments that resemble something you would hear in an elementary school playground than in a room with grown adults. The word in question today – FILLET.
“I bought these snapper ‘fil-lays'”, says he.
“Fil-lits?”, I ask.
“No, Fil-LAYS”
“You mean Fil-LITS”
…
You get the idea.
He shakes his head at me whenever we are out in a restaurant or at the seafood stand and I ask for a “fil-LIT”. Noone’s batted an eyelash at me yet so I assume they have heard both versions (although I still maintain mine is correct).
And while I was Googling for a witty e-card to add to this post, I went on a tangent reading the best tweets from ‘English50Cent’ (Caution: Link has colorful language). I never found the e-card but I did get a few chuckles in.
So, here are the controversial fillets -some beautiful snapper. I chose to keep the skin on because I like it but you can take the skin off if you wish.
Slice the fish up into 2 inch pieces and marinate with some egg white, salt and a bit of tapioca flour.
While the fish marinates, you can cut up an onion, some mushrooms and green onion.
You can also mix together the ingredients for the seasoning sauce – sherry, homemade ketchup, salt, sesame oil, white vinegar, honey, water.
When you are ready to cook the fish, coat the fish pieces in more tapioca flour to give it a crispy batter.
Use your fat of choice over high heat and shallow fry the fish until the pieces are lightly browned and cooked.
Drain over paper towels.
Leaving 2 TBSP fat in the pan, cook onion, mushroom and sauce until thick and bubbly.
Add fish back to the pan and stir gently to evenly coat all pieces with sauce.
Sprinkle with green onion and serve.
You’ll need:
- 2 lb snapper (or other firm white fish), cut into 2 inch slices
- 1 onion, diced
- 1 portabello mushroom, diced
- Extra tapioca flour for coating fish
- Enough fat of your choice (Olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, bacon grease)
- 2 green onions, chopped
Marinade:
- 1 egg white
- 1 TBSP tapioca flour
- 1 tsp sea salt
Seasoning sauce:
- 8 TBSP white vinegar
- 12 TBSP water
- 6 TBSP homemade ketchup
- 2 TBSP dry sherry
- 5 TBSP raw honey
- 2 tsp sesame oil
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tsp tapioca flour
- Mix marinade ingredients and combine with fish for at least 30 minutes
- Combine seasoning sauce ingredients and set aside
- Heat up fat of your choice over high heat and shallow fry fish until it is lightly browned and cooked
- Drain fish over paper towels
- Drain fat from pan except for 2 TBSP
- Cook onions, mushroom and seasoning sauce until thick and bubble
- Add fish back to pan, stir carefully until sauce is evenly coating all the fish
- Sprinkle green onion over fish and serve
