Friday Night Fish

[jglazer75]

In the Midwest here (more particularly in Wisconsin, but I've seen it in Ohio and Illinois as well) there is a ritual of Friday Night Fish that extends beyond the lenten season. Of course, during lent Friday Night Fish is not unusual at all. Anyway. Given that it's the season...

...what does everyone do for their Friday Night Fish? Does it have to be fried? Deep fried or pan fried? What types? Cod is usual, but anything more unusual? With Potatoes? vegetables? Rice?

My only requirements when having Friday Night Fish are that it be fried (it doesn't matter how) and that it be served with potatoes.

Tonight, we are having pan-fried ocean perch with potatoes lyonnaise.

[jackal10]

My family (Ashkenazi anglo-jewry) always served fish for Friday night supper. It is a custom peculiar to some London Jews.

Sometimes cold poached salmon but usually cold fried fish - fish dipped in egg and matzo meal and deep fried, then eaten cold. There is a reference to it in Thomas Jefferson's cokery book. Jefferson, the third President of the United States and a famous epicurean, discovered "fried fish in the Jewish fashion" when he came to England. When his granddaughter Virginia put together a collection of his favorite recipes, she included a recipe for fried fish in the Jewish manner to be eaten cold....

I beleive it was a legacy of the Portuguese Marranos (crypto-Jews) who came to England in the sixteenth century, many of them via Holland. Manuel Brudo, a Portuguese Marrano, wrote in 1544 that the favorite dish of Marrano refugees in England was fried fish. They sprinkled it with flour and dipped it in egg and in bread crumbs. Lady Judith Montefiore, the anonymous editor-author of the first Jewish cookbook in England (published in 1846 - I have a copy) referred to the frying oil as "Florence oil," meaning olive oil. At that time an important community of Marranos in Livorno (where her husband came from) exported olive oil to England.

SOme claim that this is the origin of fish and chips as a national dish.

[gourmande]

For as long as I can remember, Friday meals have been "meatless" or "maigre" as we would call it. Obvioulsy this started out as a religious observance but is now purely tradition ofr habit, at least in my home. When I was younger, Friday dinner consisted of fish (usually cod sole or halibut) a hearty pea soup or baked beans, the last two prepared without the usual pork hock and ham (soup) and salted pork (beans).

Though I continue the meatless Friday tradition, our meals are bit more diverse than they were way back then. 99% of the time I'll prepare fish for dinner and sometimes for lunch as well. The last month's or so worth of Friday fish dinners included:

- baked salmon with maple burbon sauce...

- baked turbot with a lemon tarragon mayonnaise...

- tuna casserole

- salmon en papillote...

- baked Nile perch with a honey Dijon glaze...

I haven't been to the fishmonger's yet so still unsure what we're having for dinner tonight

In the summer (when I can deep-fry outdoors) I'll make fish (beer battered) and chips as that is my husband's favourite Friday dinner.

In this city, most churches, K of C halls, Canadian Legions and Clubs (Scottish, English, Italian, Irish, French...) have a Friday Fish Fry open to the public, and this is a year round thing.

[Viola da gamba]

We eat fish a lot, so the fact that it's Friday happens to be somewhat coincidental, but whatever - tonight we're having halibut cheeks ( ) - probably one of my favourite things - so roll on supper.

[mpav]

Breaded (cracker meal)flounder, or sole, is what we had every Friday when I was a girl now Imake it less often, but it's still my favorite. Salmon is next best, or scallops, or fried oysters, or codfish cakes, or tuna casserole, or salmon.

When it is not Lent, I do eat meat on Fidays, sometimes, but will make exceptions.

[gourmande]

Tonight it's Nile perch baked over chopped canned tomatoes topped with a garlicky parsley and bread crumb crust; lemon scented basmati rice; and a salad of spinach, red pepper and oranges.

[Juanito]

Meatless Fridays are my tradition, too. Sadly, my wife doesn't care to participate, thus requiring two separate dinners to be cooked on Friday nights, which can often be a PITA.

My SOP is to have a pasta dish or soup first. That would likely be escarole and beans, pasta e fagioli, or spaghetti alia olio. I will follow that up with a piece of fish, last night, it was polenta coated trout filet, pan fried.

It could just have easily been roasted salmon or halibut, or stuffed filet of sole. You know, whatever looks good in the fish case that day.

Anyway, I'm glad to see I have company in my avoidance of meat on Fridays. Most of the people who know me think I am nuts for sticking to this now mostly out of favor tradition.

[Taboni]

Growing up we never ate meat on Fridays, even after the church said it was ok. Now since my wife is not as archaic as my family, and I don't feel like cooking 2 meals, I indulge. My parents still maintain a meatless Friday houselhold year round, and add a meatless Wednesday during Lent. Eating meat on a Friday should be the worst of my sins I do miss my mothers Dover sole meuniere though...mmmmm.

[gourmande]

...I do miss my mothers Dover sole meuniere though...

That reminds me of my mom as well. When I was very young (I'm talking back in the mid fifties) dishes like Dover sole meunière and filet de sole amandine sounded so exotic. Thinking back now, anything that actually had a name sounded exotic.

[DeVeaux]

Friday fish is unknown here in Kansas, as far as I can tell, so it's not the whole Midwest.

In Western New York, where I was born and raised, friday night fish fries are a way of life. Deep fried cod, in beer or regular batter, fries and slaw. We had neighborhood grocers who fired up the deep friers on fridays and everyone stopped by for take out fish fries on the way home from work, unless they stopped off at the neighborhood tavern, where fish fries were the rule on friday nights. All year long, not just Lent.

Now, I make my own fish fry at home. I spent a summer in high school cooking at an H. Salt Fish & Chips, where we hand cut and battered the cod and deep fried it in large fryers, along with potatos that had just been peeled in a rumbler. We first blanched the chips in oil for about a minute, took them out and drained them, and then fried them up. I still fry chips this way.

Sounds like I'll have to visit Milwaukee on a friday night.