Fish sans Chips

Anyone in my family who may read this will probably think this is an early April Fool's joke, but I really did decide to make fish last night. As a rule, I'm not the biggest fish person, but really light, white fish I tend to like, so when I saw cod on sale I decided to jump in and make some pan fried cod. First I decided to make some homemade tartar sauce.

Not sure if onions with alien growths are a good thing to be eating, but once I chopped it off it looked pretty normal so no worries. I looked up a couple of tartar sauce recipes online and sort of winged it from there. (Here's a good one: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/tartar-sauce-i/). 

You're supposed to chop up the onion pieces really small but I don't own a food processor and I may or may not have broken my mini-chopper making oreo truffles last week so I did my best with plain old knives.

Most of the recipes I read also called for relish but I didn't have any and didn't feel like changing out of my comfy sweats to go to the store so I just chopped up a couple pickle slices. 

Mixed it all in with a some mayo, salt, pepper, lemon juice, garlic powder and cumin (to add a little bite) and the tartar sauce was good to go. I like it really cold so I did this a few hours in advance and left it in the fridge.

 Next up, fish time! This was all one long piece of cod when I bought it so I cut it into three smaller pieces to fit in the pan. Same with chicken, a lot of the tips I saw online said to coat the fish in egg first to get the breading to stick but I didn't realize we were out of eggs till I was already in the middle of the cooking process. However, some also recommend milk (this recipe sounds like a good one: http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Panfried-Cod) so I soaked the fish in a bowl of milk for about 15 minutes before I cooked it.

I was just going to use flour for the breading but then I saw my box of Bisquick in the cupboard and figured it would be even better than plain old flour (spoiler alert: I was right). I also added some chile powder (I recommend cayenne but I'm fresh out of that too) and this lemon & pepper spice that one of my roommates bought.

I heated just enough vegetable oil to completely cover the bottom of the pan in a medium sauce pan on medium high heat. As soon as the oil was hot enough that it had the consistency of water, I tossed in the fish. Each piece was a different thickness so I can't say a specific amount of time each side should cook, but about 4 or 5 minutes per side is a good estimate.

If anyone can tell me how to get fish out of the pan without it crumbling into tiny pieces I would appreciate it. Only the biggest piece stayed together, the rest was kind of a mess, but definitely yummy.

I know fried fish usually goes with "chips" (french or freedom fries to my fellow Americans), but I can only handle so much greasy food in one sitting so I made roasted asparagus. After rinsing I chopped off the ends of the stalks. (I did this while the oil was heating and the fish was soaking in the milk).

I was spending enough time on the rest of the meal so I wanted to do something simple for the vegetable. I drizzled the asparagus with olive oil and then sprinkled with salt, pepper, and garlic powder and popped them in the oven. I like my veggies cooked but still crispy and fresh so I don't like them cooked for more than 7 or 8 minutes but just check them and take them out when they look good to you. (I did this while the fish was frying).

And ta-da! The finished project! Paired perfectly with the several episodes of Doctor Who I watched last night.