Cape-Style Spicy Beer-Battered Fish Bites

I've recently reworked this recipe for a guest blogpost I wrote for The World of Beer blog. This is one of my all-time favourite recipes, and I do hope you give it a try.

I often use beer to make batter for fritters and other deep-fried delectables because it produces such a beautifully light and brittle result. The actual science behind the beer-effect has always been a mystery to me, but recently I came across an article in Scientific American that neatly explains just why beer makes such excellent batters. In Beer Batter is Better, W. Wayt Gibbs and Nathan Myhrvold write: “Beer makes such a great base for batter because it simultaneously adds three ingredients—carbon dioxide, foaming agents and alcohol—each of which brings to bear different aspects of physics and chemistry to make the crust light and crisp.”

One of the most important points they make in the article is that because alcohol evaporates so fast, a batter made with beer needs less cooking time and dries out more quickly than one made with water or milk.

When it comes to frying delicate fish in batter, this speedy cooking time plus the insulating effects of the foamy batter both play a crucial role in preventing the fish from drying out in the fierce heat of the oil. It took me many attempts to come up with the right formula for a super-crisp fish batter, and eventually I abandoned wheat flour and cornflour altogether. In this recipe, I’ve used a mixture of chickpea flour and rice flour to give the spiced batter a fine texture and a lovely, lacy crispness. As the nuggets hit the hot oil, the batter puffs up into a crunchy golden cage, while the encased cubes of fresh linefish are quickly cooked by the action of steam.

I have called these nuggets 'Cape-style' because the fish comes from my local harbour in Hout Bay, and because the batter contains some of the key spices and flavourings of Cape Malay cuisine.

Served with a cool avocado and coriander dip, or a zingy yoghurt raita, or a fresh mint chutney, this is a delicious snack for a festive occasion, and I promise your guests will fall on the nuggets like starving puppies. Do use very fresh, firm-fleshed fish, from which you have removed all the bones, and not frozen fish, which will turn to mush.

I find it easiest to deep-fry food in a small, deep saucepan over a gas flame. You can use a pan over an electric plate, or a domestic deep-fat fryer, but a naked flame is better because it allows you to regulate the heat with ease. For perfect results, I can recommend using a thermometer to keep the oil at a constant temperature of between 160°C and 170°C. If you don't have such a gadget, use Jamie Oliver’s method: put a little piece of raw potato in the oil while it’s still cold. When the potato floats to the surface and is a rich golden brown, the oil is hot enough.

Rice flour and chickpea (channa or gram) flour are both available from health shops, Indian spice shops and some supermarkets.

Cape-Style Spicy Beer-Battered Fish Bites

For the fish:
1 kg fresh, firm-fleshed white fish fillets, deboned and skinned
3 cloves garlic, peeled and finely minced
a thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, finely grated
2 tsp (10 ml) lemon juice
salt and milled black pepper
a little rice flour
oil for deep-frying

For the batter:
¾  cup (180 ml) rice flour
¾  cup (180 ml) chickpea [channa] flour
2 tsp (10 ml) cumin
2 tsp (10 ml) powdered coriander
1 tsp (5 ml) turmeric
1 tsp (5 ml) red chilli powder (or more, to taste)
1 ½  tsp (7.5 ml) salt
milled black pepper
1 x 330 ml can of ice-cold lager

To serve:
lemon wedges
flaky sea salt
a dip of your choice

First make the batter. Sift the rice flour and chickpea flour into a mixing bowl and add the spices, salt and pepper. Gently pour the beer over the dry ingredients and whisk lightly until you have a smooth, slightly puffy batter about the thickness of cream.  Don’t over-mix the batter. Place in the fridge for 10 minutes.

Cut the fish into 2-cm square cubes. Put the cubes in a bowl and add the garlic, ginger and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper and toss well to combine. Set aside for five minutes.

Warm a platter in the oven. Heat the oil in a small, deep saucepan, until it reaches 160°C. Put a little rice flour on a plate. Roll each fish cube in rice flour, dust well to remove the excess and, using a fork or a pair of tongs, dip the fish into the batter so that it is well coated. Gently lower the nuggets into the oil (five at a time is about right) and cook for a minute and a half to two minutes, or until puffy, crisp and golden. Fish the nuggets out of the oil in the order in which you put them in, using a slotted spoon, and drain well on kitchen paper. Place them in the warm oven while you fry the rest.

Serve piping hot with lemon wedges and a dip.

Serves 6-8 as a snack. 

This article originally appeared at www.scrumptious.co.za on 5 January 2010, and then in The World of Beer's blog on 20 June 2012.

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Curried Lamb Ribbetjies with Mint Yoghurt

Slow cooking, and dishes that take a few days to prepare, don’t ever feature on MasterChef because of the obvious time limitations of reality TV. I think this is a pity, because time and patience are often the most delicious aspects of a dish, and this is especially true of meat that is cooked over an open flame.

Curried Lamb Ribs with Mint Yoghurt 

Long marinating and/or many hours of slow cooking can work absolute wonders, especially with tougher cuts of meat. Think, for example, of a whole lamb or pig that is spit-roasted for hours, rotating gently in front of a wood fire until its skin is burnished mahogany and its meat falling from the bone in tender flakes.

A braai is quintessentially South African, so for this week’s Woolies The Pantry recipe I’ve chosen lamb ribbetjies [riblets] because I love them (and their name!), and a Cape-Malay-style marinade based on a traditional curried lamb-sosatie soaking sauce. Drenched in a turmeric-yellow, sharp-sweet marinade, Malay sosaties of this sort have a long and noteworthy history as one of the classics of Cape Malay cooking. The basic recipe has remained largely unchanged over at least two centuries; its pedigree is doubtless older than that, because the dish was bought to the Cape from the East during the earliest days of the slave trade. In my version of the marinade, I’ve used yoghurt in addition to a variety of wonderful spices, because this helps to tenderise the lamb ribbetjies so they are beautifully succulent when they come off the braai.

Click here for my recipe for snack-sized Cape Malay Lamb Sosaties.

My other recipes for Woolworths The Pantry: 
Champ with Chives and Garlic
Gin-Cured Gravadlax with Crisped Capers

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Curried Lamb Ribbetjies with Mint Yoghurt

1.2 kg lamb ribbetjies [riblets]
salt
lemon wedges, to serve

For the marinade:
4 T (60 ml) sunflower oil
2 onions, peeled and very finely chopped
4 cardamom pods
1 quill of cinnamon
1 red chilli, finely chopped
2 T (30 ml) grated fresh ginger
4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1½ t (7.5 ml) ground cumin
1 t (5 ml) ground coriander
1 t (5 ml) red chilli powder
2 t (10 ml) medium-strength curry powder
1½ t (7.5 ml) turmeric
3 T (45 ml) white wine vinegar
80 ml thick fruity chutney
1 T (15 ml) sugar
3/4 cup (180 ml) water
milled black pepper
80 ml lemon juice (about 3 small lemons)
2 cups (500 ml) natural white yoghurt

For the dip:
1 cup (250 ml) thick white Greek yoghurt
80 ml finely chopped fresh mint
80 ml finely chopped fresh coriander
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
the juice of half a lemon
salt and milled black pepper

Heat the oil in a pan and add the onions, cardamom pods and cinnamon stick. Fry over a medium-high flame for 5 minutes, or until the onions are golden. Add the chilli, ginger and garlic and cook for another minute, without allowing the garlic to burn. Stir in the cumin, coriander, chilli powder, curry powder, turmeric, vinegar and chutney, turn down the heat and cook, stirring, for two minutes. Add the sugar and water, season with pepper and simmer briskly for 8 minutes. Remove from the heat, allow to cool, then stir in the lemon juice and yoghurt.  Tip the marinade into a lidded plastic or ceramic bowl, add the ribbetjies, mix well and refrigerate for 48 hours, stirring once or twice.

To make the dip, combine the yoghurt, mint, coriander, garlic and lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Cover and refrigerate.

Season the ribbetjies with salt and braai over medium-hot coals for about 8 minutes on all four sides (half an hour in total), basting frequently with the leftover marinade.  The coals should not be too hot, or the ribs will scorch: by the end of the cooking time, they should be a rich yellow gold, flecked here and there with sticky black bits. Serve hot with the yoghurt dip and lemon wedges.

Serves 4. 

• For best results, marinate the ribbetjies for two to three days; 24 hours is the absolute minimum.    
• If you’d like a hotter marinade, add more chilli powder or chopped fresh red chillies to the marinade.
• Don’t rush the cooking time: lamb ribbetjies can be quite fatty, and long cooking over medium coals will help render the fat.
• These can be successfully cooked in an oven under a very hot grill, but make sure the ribbetjies are at least 20 cm below the grill, and turn them frequently.

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Cape-Malay-Style Curried Lamb Kebabs with Apricots

A sosatie (so-sar-tee) is what South Africans call the full-size version of this succulent and highly spiced lamb or mutton kebab.

Drenched in a turmeric-yellow, sharp-sweet marinade, sosaties of this sort are usually threaded with chunks of raw onion, dried fruit and fresh bay or lemon leaves; traditionally they contained chunks of sheep fat, which helped keep the meat juicy.

My bite-sized version contains little fat, and the lamb is tenderised by a long marinating time and a small amount of plain yoghurt.

Welcome to the third in my series of delicious, easy football snacks with a South African flavour.

This is the sort of recipe that can bring tears to the eyes of a South African living away from home, so evocative is it of the lazy, woodsmoky scent of a traditional braai [barbeque].  This is one of the classics of South African cuisine, and is certainly - along with bobotie - the best-known of all Cape Malay dishes.

Some claim that the name 'sosatie' is derived from a combination of the words 'saus' [sauce] and 'sate', but the authoritative Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles tells me that the Afrikaans/Dutch name 'sasaatje' comes from the Javanese word 'sesate', which means 'meat on skewers'.

The word first appeared in print, says the dictionary, in 1833.  So popular were these kebabs in the early days of the Cape, says that wonderful raconteur Lawrence Green in his book Tavern of the Seas, that many of the taverns of old Cape Town were known as 'Sosatie and Rice houses'.

Hildagonda Duckitt's "Where is it?" of Recipes, first published in 1891, gives a recipe for 'sasaties or kabobs' that does not differ substantially from a sosatie you might be offered at a family braai today, 120 years later.  As is the case with any hallowed recipe, every cook has his or her own closely guarded formula.

Sosaties are always cooked over hot coals. If you don't have access to a barbeque, you can cook them under a fiercely hot preheated oven grill. For an authentic taste, put the meat very close to the grill at first so that the edges of the meat and fruit just begin to catch and blacken. Then move the sosaties to the middle of the oven, turn down the heat and bake until the lamb is cooked through.

If you can't find lemon or orange leaves, use bay leaves (but citrus leaves are best, as they infuse the lamb with a wonderful perfume as it cooks). Ask your butcher for lamb from the leg or shoulder, or for some nice fatty mutton, if he has it.  You can add petals of raw onion to these kebabs, but be warned that they will retain a bit of raw crunch.

You will find all the ingredients below in a good spice shop.

Cape-Malay Style Curried Lamb Kebabs with Apricots

750 g lamb from the leg or shoulder, cut into large cubes
fresh lemon or orange leaves
24 dried apricots
melted butter for brushing

For the marinade:
40 g dried tamarind pulp
1 cup (250 ml) boiling water
4 Tbsp (60 ml) vegetable oil
2 onions, peeled and very finely chopped
3 cardamom pods
1 thumb-length quill of cinnamon
1 red chilli, seeds removed and finely chopped
2 Tbsp (30 ml) grated fresh ginger
3 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1½ tsp (7.5 ml) ground cumin
1 tsp (5 ml) ground coriander
1 tsp (5 ml) red chilli powder
3 Tbsp (45 ml) white wine vinegar
80 ml thick fruit chutney (Mrs Ball's Original, if you can find it)
2 Tbsp (30 ml) sugar
2 tsp (10 ml) mild curry powder
1½ tsp (7.5 ml) turmeric
½ cup (125 ml) water
salt and milled black pepper
the juice of half a lemon
½ cup (125 ml) plain white yoghurt

Put the tamarind in a small bowl and cover it with the boiling water. Set aside. Heat the oil in a pan and add the cardamom pods, cinnamon stick and onion. Cook, over a brisk heat, for 5 minutes, or until the onions take on a golden colour.

Add the chilli, ginger and garlic and cook for another minute or so, without allowing the garlic to brown. Stir in the cumin, coriander and chilli powder and allow to sizzle or two minutes, or until you have a rich golden paste. Now add the vinegar and chutney, turn down the heat and allow to bubble for three minutes.

Using your fingers, break up the tamarind pulp in the water. Tip the lot into a sieve set over a bowl, pressing down on the pulp to extract the juice. Discard the pulp. Pour the tamarind water into the pan and add the sugar, curry powder, turmeric and water.  Season with salt and pepper and simmer for 15 minutes.  Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly.  Stir in the lemon juice and yoghurt.

Tip the marinade into a deep plastic or ceramic dish and add the lamb cubes. Stir well to coat, cover and place in the fridge for at least 24 hours, or longer if possible (you can make these three or four days in advance).

Pour some boiling water over the apricots and allow to soak for 5 minutes. Drain and set aside. Soak some slim satay sticks in water for 10 minutes. Cut the lemon, orange or bay leaves into pieces the size of a postage stamp.

Thread a piece of lamb onto a satay stick, then add a slice of lemon leaf, then an apricot, then another piece of lemon leaf, and finally a piece of lamb. Brush a little extra marinade over the sosaties. Grill, over hot coals, turning frequently, for 6-10 minutes, depending on the heat of your fire, or until the lamb is cooked right through (see my notes, above, about oven-cooking).

Brushing the kebabs with melted butter as they cook will give you a nice glossy finish. Serve piping hot. If you like, you can bring the remains of the marinade to the boil, simmer for 10 minutes and serve as a dipping sauce.

Makes about 24 snack-sized kebabs.


Like this soccer snack? Try my Mini Pita Breads with Spicy Meatballs and Hoummous, Mini Bunny Chow with Butter Chicken and Potato, Cheese and Chilli Phyllo Triangles

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Extra-Lemony Cape-Malay-Style Pickled Fish

Cape Pickled Fish

If you're not a lover of seafood, your nose may well wrinkle at the thought of eating pickled fish. I concede that, when put together, the words 'pickled' and 'fish' are unpleasantly redolent of pale things floating in jars of vinegar.

But this dish, properly made with good, fresh ingredients, is quite delicious, and I urge you to give the recipe a bash.

Consisting of  firm-fleshed white line fish soaked in a turmeric-yellow, oniony, lightly curried pickle, this dish has a long and noteworthy history as one of the classic staples of 'Cape Malay' cooking. The basic recipe has remained largely unchanged over at least two centuries; its pedigree is doubtless older than that, because the dish was bought to the Cape from the East during the earliest days of the slave trade.

There isn't space on this blog to do justice to the long and painful saga of slavery at the Cape, or to the culinary heritage of the descendants of slaves.  If you're interested, do please visit the Cape Slavery Heritage blog, an encyclopaedic site packed with fascinating stories and many compelling images.

Cape Slave Fisherman.
Image courtesy of Patric Tariq Mellét

The earliest written reference I know of to Cape pickled fish comes from Lady Anne Barnard (picture below) who, after visiting Meerlust farm in 1798, wrote that she was served 'fish of the nature of cod, pickled with Turmarick'.

Hildagonda J. Duckitt, one of South Africa's most esteemed historical cookbook authors, provided a recipe for sole pickled with mango relish, onions, 12 small chillies and a full quart of vinegar in her famous Hilda's 'Where Is It?' Of Recipes (1891).

Although the key ingredients of this well-loved staple have remained unchanged over time, there are hundreds of different recipes: each family has its own particular favourite, often a closely guarded formula.  In their brilliantly instructive book Cookery in Southern Africa: Traditional and Today (1970), Lesley Faull and Vida Heard give no fewer than four different recipes, of varying complexity, for 'ingelegde' [pickled] fish.  Faldela Williams, author of the definitive reference The Cape Malay Cookbook (1988), remembers this recipe from her childhood in District Six as a festive dish, reserved for high days and holidays.  Her recipe is a rather pared-down one, containing only nine pickling ingredients, while esteemed local foodie and wine writer Michael Olivier provides a more complex recipe for kerrievis [curried fish], containing 15 picking ingredients.

What all these recipes have in common is fish, onions, turmeric, salt, curry powder and the all-important vinegar.  Important, of course, because this is the acidifying agent that prevents bacterial growth and preserves the fish. In older recipes for pickled fish, the fried fillets are packed into jars, liberally doused with a very vinegary pickling solution and set aside in a cool place to keep for many weeks, or even months.

I find most ready-bought pickled fish (which is available in many supermarkets and delis in Cape Town) too aggressively vinegary and oily, so here is my version, which uses just a little vinegar and oil, and several pungent lemony ingredients. This pickle will not, of course, last for months in a jar, but you can keep it in the fridge for four to five days. This is lovely with fresh brown bread and butter, and crisp finely sliced iceberg lettuce.


Extra-Lemony Cape-Malay-Style Pickled Fish

For the fish:

1 kg firm-fleshed white fish, skinned and thoroughly boned (I used sustainable yellowtail)
½ cup (125 ml) flour, for dusting
salt and white pepper
3 Tbsp (45 ml) vegetable oil

For the pickle: 

4 Tbsp (60 ml) flavourless oil (sunflower or canola)
2 onions, peeled and sliced in rings (not too finely)
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
a thumb-size piece of ginger, peeled and grated
4 bay leaves
6 fresh lemon leaves
3 whole white cardamom pods
1 tsp (5 ml) cumin seeds
1 large red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
2 tsp (10 ml)  turmeric
1 tsp (5 ml) mild curry powder
1 Tbsp (15 ml) brown sugar
4 Tbsp (60 ml) white wine vinegar
1 tsp (5 ml) finely grated lemon zest
8 black peppercorns
1 tsp (5 ml) salt
the juice of 3 lemons
½ cup (125 ml) water

To top:
extra fresh lemon leaves

Cut the fish into portions each about the size of a deck of cards. Put the flour onto a plate and season with salt and white pepper. Heat the oil over a brisk flame in a frying pan. Dust each slice of fish in the seasoned flour, shake to remove the excess, place in the hot oil and fry, in batches, for 2-3 minutes on each side, or until golden brown on both sides and just cooked through.  Remove from the heat and set aside.

Now make the pickling mixture. Wipe the pan clean of oil and residue using a piece of kitchen paper. Heat the vegetable oil in the pan, over a medium-high flame. When the oil's good and hot, add the onion rings and fry for three minutes, or until they beginning to colour, but still retain a good crunch.  Add the garlic, ginger, bay leaves, lemon leaves, cardamom and cumin seeds and cook, stirring gently, for another minute or two, taking care not to let the garlic brown.

Now add the chilli, turmeric, curry powder, sugar, vinegar, lemon zest, peppercorns and salt. Turn down the heat and bubble gently for two minutes, or until the mixture has reduced slightly, and the strong vinegary flavour has cooked away.

Stir in the lemon juice and water. Simmer for another minute, then remove from the heat.

Tip half of this mixture into the bottom of a ceramic or plastic dish just big enough to hold all the fish in a single layer. Pour the remaining mixture on top, making sure every piece of fish is well coated with the pickling liquid.  Top with a few extra lemon leaves, cover the dish tightly with clingfilm or a lid, and refrigerate for at least 12 hours - preferably 24 - turning the fish now and then in its pickle.  Serve cold, with buttered brown bread.

Makes 1 kg pickled fish Print Friendly

Cape-style Crispy Spiced Battered Fish Bites

Rice flour, chickpea flour and beer give this spiced batter a lovely crispiness: as the nuggets hit the hot oil, the batter puffs up into a crunchy golden cage, while the encased cubes of fresh linefish are quickly cooked by the action of steam. It took me four attempts to find the right formula for the batter, and, in true Goldilocks fashion, the last option - namely, to abandon wheat flour and cornflour altogether - was the best.

Crisp battered fish is, to my mind, the food of the gods, but I very rarely make it at home because deep-fried food isn't exactly wholesome family fare, is it? A McRatburger-and-fries now and then is all my teens can expect in the deep-fried department. (Hah! There is no McDonalds in our new home town!)

I have called this 'Cape-style' because the fish comes from my local harbour, and because the batter contains some of the key spices and flavourings of Cape Malay cuisine.

Served with a cool avocado and coriander dip (but use yoghurt in place of the crème fraîche), this is a delectable snack for a festive occasion, and I promise your guests will fall on them like starving puppies. Do use very fresh, firm-fleshed fish, from which you have removed all the bones, and not frozen fish, which will turn to mush.

I find it easiest to deep-fry food (not that I'm the expert, but for what it's worth) in a small, deep saucepan over a gas flame. You can use a pan over an electric plate, or a domestic deep-fat fryer, but a naked flame is better because it allow you to regulate the heat with ease. For perfect results, I can recommend using a thermometer - I use a jam-making/candy thermometer - to keep the oil at a constant temperature of between 160°C and 170°C. If you don't have such a gadget, have a look at these tips for checking whether the oil is hot enough.

You can use ordinary cake flour, with a little cornflour added, for this recipe, but you will get a much crispier result using rice flour (available from health shops) and chickpea [gram/channa] flour (from Indian spice shops).

Cape-style Crispy Spiced Battered Fish Bites

For the fish:
1 kg fresh, firm-fleshed white fish fillets, deboned and skinned
3 cloves garlic, peeled and finely minced
a thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, finely grated
2 tsp (10 ml) lemon juice
salt and milled black pepper
a little rice flour
oil for deep-frying

For the batter:
¾  cup (180 ml) rice flour
¾  cup (180 ml) chickpea [channa] flour
2 tsp (10 ml) cumin
2 tsp (10 ml) powdered coriander
1 tsp (5 ml) turmeric
1 tsp (5 ml) red chilli powder (or more, to taste)
1 ½  tsp (7.5 ml) salt
milled black pepper
1 x 330 ml can of ice-cold lager

To serve: 
lemon wedges
flaky sea salt
a dip of your choice (I can recommend my coriander and avocado dip)

First make the batter. Sift the rice flour and chickpea flour into a mixing bowl and add the spices, salt and pepper. Gently pour the beer over the dry ingredients and whisk lightly until you have a smooth, slightly puffy batter about the thickness of cream.  Don’t over-mix the batter. Place in the fridge for 10 minutes.

Cut the fish into 2-cm square cubes. Put the cubes in a bowl and add the garlic, ginger and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper and toss well to combine. Set aside for five minutes.

Warm a platter in the oven. Heat the oil in a small, deep saucepan, until it reaches 160°C. Put a little rice flour on a plate. Roll each fish cube in rice flour, dust well to remove the excess and, using a fork or a pair of tongs, dip the fish into the batter so that it is well coated. Gently lower the nuggets into the oil (five at a time is about right) and cook for a minute and a half to two minutes, or until puffy, crisp and golden. Fish the nuggets out of the oil in the order in which you put them in, using a slotted spoon, and drain well on kitchen paper. Place them in the warm oven while you fry the rest.

Serve piping hot with lemon wedges and a dip.

Serves 6-8 as a snack. 

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