“Fish batter fry” is a celebrated fried dish back home, often served as starter to the guests in occasions and parties. Its recipe is not very demanding, with the only important requisite of a good quality fish. In Bengal, we generally use “Bhetki fish” fillets to prepare the batter fry, which is a very tasty, soft and mouth melting fish, perfect for this recipe. I owe this recipe to my mother-in-law.

In Europe though “Bhetki” is not available, there are other fishes which can substitute it very well, for example the Cod fish or Pangasius. There is a small open or fresh market in a 5 minutes walking distance from my current house in Utrecht which holds 4-5 big fish shops with a variety of fishes. These shops are always full of customers which reminds me about the fish market in my home town Kolkata. Every weekend me with my husband go there and buy fish from those crowded shops, usually have to wait long in the queue. Interestingly those shops do not only sell raw fishes but also the fried fish known as “bak vis” in Dutch, which is pretty similar to our fish batter fry. This fried fish comes with different delicious sauces too.

Here I tried the recipe with “Pangasius” fish which comes out really well. The recipe follows below.

Ingredients for 4 fries :

1. Pangasius fish fillet cut into 4 pieces
2. Ginger & garlic juice – 2 tbspoon
3. Onion juice – 1 tbspoon
4. Lemon juice – ½ tbspoon
5. Black pepper powder – 1 teaspoon
6. Flour – 2 – 2½ tbspoon
7. Baking soda/powder – ½ teaspoon
8. Butter – 1 tbspoon
9. Egg – 1
10. Milk – 2 tbspoon
11. Salt to taste
12. Cooking oil

Procedure :

Marinate the pieces of fish with salt, pepper powder, onion, ginger, garlic and lemon juice for at least half an hour.

For preparing the batter, mix flour, a bit of salt, baking soda and butter very well. Beat the egg with milk and add to the flour mixture. Make a lump free batter, add more milk if needed.

Heat sufficient amount of oil in a frying pan over medium flame. Dip the marinated pieces of fish into the batter and deep fry in oil.

Note :

1. Fish fillets should not be very thick.
2. Batter should not be very thick or very thin.
3. The oil should be moderately hot while frying the fish otherwise the batter envelope will burn and the fish inside will remain uncooked.