Bread Fish Fry

In the spirit of "there's a first time for everything," here is my first recipe containing fish on New Recipe Night.  I have well over 600 posts on here, and none of them have been for fish or contain fish.  I do not like fish.  At all.  I don't like how it smells or the texture of it.  We had it a few times growing up, and nothing bad ever happened to me from eating it (unless you count gagging) but I have never developed a taste for it.  Because of this, many of my children also think they do not like fish.  My oldest has tried several varieties of things at buffets, and likes crab rangoon and scallops now.  Good for him.  My two youngest have never tried anything up to this point. 

So why the change?  Well, my sweet youngest, who is 6, had a chance to go fishing with his dad and an older man that goes to church with us and also works with my husband.  They caught 8 fish.  I tried to encourage them, prior to the trip, to catch and release, so that I wouldn't have to do anything with fish that they would potentially bring home.  That is apparently not the kind of fishing that George does, though.  However, he is a full-service fisherman.  Not only did he take all 8 fish home, chop off whatever parts needed chopping off, scale them, gut them, whatever it is you do to get them ready for eating, he did all that.  He brought them to work, on ice, for Steve the next morning.  And, he hand-wrote a recipe for what to do with them.  You may be thinking at this point that I would have had to cook them.  But, glory be, I had to work!  So Steve made this!  He said it came out awesome.  Nathan had seconds.  Sam liked it.  Emma said the more she ate it, the less she liked it.  But she did eat some.  They brought some to Grampie, who called later to say how much he liked it.  So, due to the rave reviews, I said I would post the recipe on the blog.  Here it is, typed out in George's format.

Bread Fish Fry
1. Put 1/4 cup milk in a bowl and set aside.
2. Put 3/4 cup of flour, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, 1 tsp basil in small bag (like gallon ziploc) and shake it up
3. Place either bread crumbs or crushed corn flakes in a plate and set aside (will need 1 1/2-2 cups)
4. Beat a couple of eggs in a bowl.
Now
1. dip each fillet in milk, wet both sides
2. put wet fillets in flour mixture (1 at a time) and shake til coated
3. put coated fillets in the egg and coat completely, then...
4. put fillet in plate with bread crumbs (or corn flakes) and set aside til all fillets are coated in this manner (coat both sides of fillets)

Put 1/4 inch of oil in fry pan and heat almost to the point of smoking (med high not super hot) fry fillets til golden brown.  Should take 2 1/2-3 minutes per side when heat level is right.  Add more oil if needed as you go.  We serve these as fillet sandwiches with our favorite cheese and tartar sauce. Our family loves 'em!

What do I love about this?  That Nathan got the whole experience of catching, preparing, eating, and sharing the fish.  I love that George took the time to take them fishing, and then went to the trouble of getting the fish ready for us (which I'm sure must be a disgusting and gross job) and THEN took the time to hand-write a recipe for us telling us the best way to eat them!  He wrote it on a piece of notebook paper, and it's going in my keeper book just like that.  The whole thing was so cool.

I never tried the fish, although Nathan did save me some, and assured me that there was no skin left on it (a concern I had shared with them...in the past, I have seen fish skin on my fish sticks and it turned my stomach).........it got rave reviews from so many other quarters...he said I could try it on leftover night....we'll see.........I don't even know what category to put this recipe in.  I don't want to start one for "fish" since it seems highly unlikely that I'll need it again...I guess meatless, because we do know several vegetarians that still eat fish.