Craving Ellie in My Belly - Crispy Fish Fingers

After this week's browniepalooza, a little light eating was definitely in order. That's one of the reasons I love being part of Craving Ellie in My Belly. We're cooking and blogging through Ellie Krieger's book The Foods You Crave.

Our host this week was Anne of Rainforest Recipes. Anne blogs from the jungles of Guatemala! How cool is that? First off, I had a fit of giggles over the term fish fingers. I don't know what made me think "Fish don't have fingers!", but after I did, I was giggling off and on.

This recipe is one that isn't in the book but you can find it on the Food Network site here. I was excited about this one as I love fried food but it doesn't love me. I used half a pound of halibut for the fish fingers but made the sauce recipe as written.

Because I used an extra sturdy whole grain bread, the crumbs were pretty large, and took a while to crisp up. The larger crumb size was a disadvantage in the breading process as the fish fingers (giggle) ended up with little bald spots where the crumb coating didn't adhere to the egg coating. I took Sara's suggestion (inspired by Aggie) and baked them on a rack. I had a fleeting thought that perhaps I should spray the rack with cooking spray, but I decided if it baked onto the rack, I didn't want to have to deal with getting it off. Dumb, dumb, dumb. The Fleeting Thought is a close relation of the Little Voice that whispers to you when you're tempted not to strain custards. Honor the Fleeting Thought, or be punished. Witness my punishment...

This recipe was pretty simple to assemble. I baked my fish fingers about an hour before we ended up having dinner, and they don't taste better when they cool off. My suggestion is to make them right before you serve them. The dipping sauce was good, but next time I would nix the Worcestershire and add maple syrup or honey. Quite honestly, I think the sauce suffered from using fresh from Paris unpasteurized Maille mustard, which is MUCH more potent than the stuff I'm used to from Trader Joe's. That was my bad and was in no way a reflection on the recipe.

All in all, we liked these. Next time I think I would nix the bread crumbs in favor of panko (check out Anne's post, she did some of the bread crumbs and some with panko), and I would play around with the sauce.

Many thanks to Anne for picking such a good and healthy recipe for us this week. Check back next week when the CEiMBs make Ellie's White Gazpacho.