Serves 1.5
For the fish:
1 large piece of skinless and boneless cod (it was about 280g)
1 slice of bread, blitzed into breadcrumbs
2 good pinches of cayenne pepper
Glug olive oil
Flour for dusting – cornflour works well
Milk
For the chips:
2-3 medium sized potatoes
Sunflower oil
For the ketchup:
1 tomato, diced
200ml passata
1 small clove garlic, crushed
Glug olive oil
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
Black pepper
To make the ketchup, fry the garlic briefly in olive oil, then add the tomatoes, passata, herbs and seasoning. Cook for around 10 minutes, mashing the diced tomatoes into the sauce as you go. This makes enough to use on one day as a simple tomato pasta sauce, with leftovers for ketchup (or a dipping sauce for fish cakes or sweetcorn pancakes). It would keep in the fridge for around 3 days, I’d say.
Cut the potatoes into chunky chips (about 1.5 cm square at the end), put in a pan of cold water, bring to the boil and parboil for 5 minutes. Drain, give them a couple of minutes to dry off and coat them in sunflower oil, cooking on a lined baking sheet in a hot oven (220 degrees) for about 25-30 minutes. Turn them over half way through.
Combine the breadcrumbs with the cayenne pepper, get a glug of olive oil hot in a pan, and brown them till they’re crispy. The cayenne gives a bit of a kick and a touch of that Captain Birdseye orange hue. Cut the fish into thick fingers and dip in flour, then milk and then in the crumbs. They join the chips in the oven for the last 15 minutes.