The Frozen Fish Sandwich

I attended elementary school during the mid-1970’s. Hot lunches were served daily for a nominal price. The food was inedible, but nobody expected otherwise.

Not my elementary school.

The exception to this was Fridays, when fish sticks were served.

These fish sticks came straight from a box. They were served with a small pot of tartar sauce and a side of coleslaw on melamine trays. Fish sticks were a universal hit with my mostly Jewish classmates, the tartar sauce less so. None of us ate the coleslaw.

Not coleslaw.

We knew, dimly, that our meal had something to do with Catholicism, but not what, or how, or why. Nor did we care. Most important to me was the tartar sauce, which seemed extremely exotic. I loved it. The kids who disliked it passed their portions down to me. Friday fish stick lunches were wonderful.

At home the occasional box of frozen fish was heated up for dinner. We ate it with french fries, also frozen. On even rarer occasions my family visited a chain fish and chip restaurant. Neither were memorable.

Unrelated, but had the potential to be quite memorable. Fortunately nothing came of it.

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As an adult cooking for two, news of depleted fish stocks became constant. Living on the Pacific Coast only amplified these troubles. Conscientious citizens kept copies of the Monterey Bay Seafood Watch Guide stuck to refrigerators and tucked in purses. Reading labels became habitual, like checking oncoming traffic before turning left or wearing a mask. Is this fish from (insert country across planet here)? Return to shelf. Is this salmon wild? No? Don’t buy it.

In this manner, I stopped buying tuna fish, which I have loved since I was tiny. Lox, another favorite food, has become a rare treat. As for frozen fish, it simply went off my radar. In fact, the entire frozen food aisle, save the peas, has become a black hole. To quote Dionne Warwick wildly out of context, Walk on By.

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This may seem a circuitious route to boxed frozen fish, but we’re getting there. For many years I was a Class A food snob. Any food I didn’t prepare myself was suspect. There were exceptions–frozen organic peas, certain products from the Asian market–but I generally avoided buying frozen foods. Most were costly; some set off my tetchy digestion. All too often, when I finally capitulated and bought something from the market’s freezer section, it tasted terrible and made me sick in the bargain.

Enter Nigella Lawson’s Cook, Eat, Repeat. Specifically, the recipe for Fish Finger Bhorta. Nigella does in fact give a recipe for a fish finger sandwich in Cook, Eat, Repeat, but I’d completely forgotten about it. The pandemic has fried my memory.

So, fish finger bhorta. The recipe in Cook, Eat, Repeat comes from journalist Ash Sarkar, who enjoys eating it after partying into the wee hours. Fish Finger Bhorta does sound like ideal late-night or early morning food, calling for mustard oil, English mustard, onion, green chilli (as the English spell it), and ginger.

Alas, Mr. IK is not fond of onions. Or green chilli. As for late-night partying, the less said, the better.

The Hatch peppers pictured above left are toothless. The can claimed otherwise. The can lied.

Never mind. If Nigella Lawson is willing to buy frozen fish sticks, maybe I needed to revisit the frozen food aisle.

A few days later I visited Berkeley Bowl, where I watched a well-dressed woman drop a few boxes of the product pictured below into her cart. I discreetly followed suit.

Pacific Sustainable Seafood hits all the right buttons: local, ethical, inexpensive, and, marvel of marvels, it tastes good. I wouldn’t serve it to Dominique Crenn, but Dominque Crenn isn’t coming to dinner.

This fish sandwich comes together rapidly. It’s easy to assemble and amenable to variation. Pacific Sustainable Seafood makes a point of being gluten free. It is also Kosher, and, of course, useful for pescatarians.

This sandwich is less a recipe than a reminder: an easy, quickly assembled snack or meal that is reasonably healthy. You can make it for one or many. Or make a buffet-style setup of fish with various sandwich makings like your favorite rolls, flatbreads, crisp lettuce, pickles, mustard, mayonnaise, hot sauce, and so on. Do make sure the food is held safely at room temperature, keeping it cool or warm. Food poisoning is never a good idea. And by all means be sure you aren’t feeding this to folks with piscine allergies.

See below for recipe variations, and don’t forget the tartar sauce.

 

Pacific Sustainable Seafood is not compensating me. They’ve never heard of me.