Fish and chips

So, I've had this written down for a while, but never bothered to post it. Probably because I'm not too good of a cook, and probably because I'm also lazy. Meh.

My short ventures in cooking started when a restaurant I went to for one specific dish messed it up. No other place served it, and it didn't come out the way I liked it that time, so naturally I was worried. So I tried making it myself.

That recipe I'll save for another time, but after getting a taste of what it was like to not be dependent on restaurants for my food, I thought I'd take it a step further. Fish and chips is a nice little meal that I usually went out for, but I decided to have a go at it myself.

Amateur recipe it may be, but for the moment, here's how I made fish and chips.

Batter
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 tablespoons corn starch
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 egg

Other Stuff
2 cod fillets
potato
oil
cornmeal (optional)

Chop the potato into chips, and soak in a bowl of warm water for 20 minutes. You can add a teaspoon of salt (or thereabouts, depending on how much water you have) to the water if you want.

Mix all the batter ingredients, mixing in the water and egg last. Press the cod fillets to drain the water from them.

Add oil to a pan and drop the potatoes in (without the water you soaked them in). Cook the potatoes until they start browning, then take them out and let them drain on paper towel. Leave the oil in the pan.

Dip the cod fillets in the batter, and get a good coat on them, then put 'em in the pan to deep fry on medium-high heat. Flip after the first minute or two, then keep flipping every two minutes or so until they're done. Four flips should do it. Take the fillets out when they're done and let them drain on paper towel.

Put the potatoes back in for a minute or two to make 'em a little more crisp and to heat them up again - they've been sitting for a good six or seven minutes.

If you want some hushpuppies, you can make some simple ones by adding cornmeal to the batter and cooking that in the oil. One spoonful of batter should be one hushpuppy.

Here's... kinda how it should look after it's done. I let them sit too long in the pan on one side, which is why the fish a little brown. If you don't flip the fillets, the side that's down will start overcooking.

Or, if you want to see how the fish looks like when done right, albeit with store-bought scalloped potatoes and not homemade chips...

Save the oil if you can - you can use it again to put a dash of seafood flavor into whatever you use to cook with it next. If you have any leftover batter, you can save it to make okonomiyaki later!