The real name of the Spicy Herb sauce is actually “dog sauce”, but since I didn’t want anyone to freak out I chose to baptize it as Spicy Herb sauce. It’s funny how some names translate very badly from one language to another. Anyways, this is one of the few fish recipes that I have made in a long time. I like fish, I just somehow never get around to making it very often. I subscribe to a couple of food magazines and this month Ricardo’s magazine had a recipe for Acras (Fish Fritters) which I really wanted to try since I have a deep abiding love for most fried things. Luckily the recipe is online and in English, you can find it here: http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipes/Appetizer/Fish/recipe.html?dishid=10247
As usual, I didn’t follow the recipe to the letter but made a few modifications. I’m not a big fan of cod, I find the flavour too strong so I used tilapia instead and skipped the poaching and soaking steps since that is designed to get the salt out. Tilapia is the tofu of fish, it doesn’t taste like much and it easily takes on other flavours. It is pretty cheap, thaws super quickly and is absolutely great to have on hand for whipping up last minute meals.
In the bowl there is Italian parsley, fresh thyme, green onions, garlic, salt, pepper, lime juice (from a bottle because I’m not paying a dollar per lime in the middle of the winter) and a diced jalapeno. Lately my supermarket only brings in jalapenos which makes me cranky. They used to bring in a mixed pack of hot peppers but it seems that I was the only one buying them. If they quit bringing in jalapenos I’m staging a sit-in.
I diced the tilapia and added it to the herbs raw. It cooks super quickly and the fillets are very thin so I wasn’t worried about them not being pre-cooked.
Pastry flour, baking powder and cornstarch went in.
The original recipe calls for whipped egg whites but my mixing bowl and the paddle were dirty and I didn’t feel like washing them so I just added in the whole eggs. I also hate throwing again egg yolks. Egg whites you can at least eat by themselves but an egg yolk omelette is a tad heavy.
All mixed up. When I first started mixing I thought I would need to add some liquid but the three eggs was enough for everything to come together.
In the original recipe the fitters are very small, but since I wanted to make this for dinner rather than for an appetizer I decided to make them a lot bigger. I thought about baking them but I was short on time so frying was the way to go.
After flipping them they were nice and golden.
For the Spicy Herb sauce (Dog Sauce) I mixed green onions, parsley, garlic, lime juice, salt, pepper, boiling water and a bit of oil. I was really surprised to see that the base of the sauce was boiling water. After everything had time to soak however, the liquid was full of flavour.
Yum. I really liked this recipe. It didn’t take a lot of time to put together and tasted great. Next time I will try baking them instead of frying. I loved the sauce; the herbs, lemon juice and green onions were a nice contrast to the hot fritters. Alongside this I made spicy jalapeno rice which was a perfect accompaniment.
