Recipe: Fish ’n chips with kim chi tartar sauce & mushy peas
It seems every city we visited in the UK and Ireland had a rendition of the good ol’, popular fish ’n chips. It’s no wonder, because the stuff is quick, easy, cheap, filling, and delicious.Fish ’n chips may be a British-born dish, but I grew up eating at Long John Silver’s, which has a similar offering of fried seafood and fried potatoes (called “fries” in the U.S. And “chips” in the UK and Ireland—and in case you are wondering, what Americans call “chips” are known as “crisps” over there). Now before you become enraged and scream, “How can you even compare fish ’n chips to that greasy fast food chain, Christine?!”, let me explain. My parents did not have a lot of money back in the ‘80s, as they were Vietnamese refugees, so Long John Silver’s was actually a treat for us, a special Friday night when my mama would slip on her midnight blue wedges, and we’d drive over to the neighborhood LJS for a dine-in family dinner.I’d eat fried fish and shrimp, a handful of fries, and hush puppies (which, sadly, I did not appreciate until adulthood—probably because the only kind I’d had as a child was from LJS). So while fish ’n chips was bountiful in the UK and Ireland during our 2015 summer holiday, it’d been a nostalgic part of my childhood all along.In continuing my new blog format where I follow my travel vlogs with food and restaurant reviews (like this one on Leo Burdock, for example) and then a recipe inspired by the travels, I’m posting here my own fish ’n chips. In this version, I use frozen fries/chips. Let’s be real—who has the time to make twice-fried chips on a weeknight? I did, however, make the “tartar sauce” and mushy peas from scratch—(I say “tartar sauce” in quotes because the hubs actually finished off the pickles in our fridge the day before I cooked the recipe, so I had to improvise. I ended up making a kim chi-based tartar sauce, which was actually quite tasty.) the nice thing about these is you can make them ahead of time.It may not be the healthiest of dishes, but fish ’n chips is still a special treat, especially here in the U.S. Where the shops are not as prevalent. I had the stuff in London at the Golden Hind, in Dufftown at the Castle Hotel, and in Dublin at Leo Burdock’s. Now, I can have it at home.