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Gourmet Guppies

We were in the lounge at Alain Chapel’s restaurant in Mionnay, France — perusing the menu while sipping champagne and nibbling on piping hot, exquisitely crisp fried whitebait — when another couple asked to join us. “So damned glad to hear someone speaking English,” the husband boomed.
He plucked the last tiny fish from the linen-lined plate and then shouted to a waiter on the other side of the room: “Gar-kon! Gar-kon! We need more of those fried guppies!”
I dared not make eye contact with my spouse, who, I knew, was debating whether to kill our new acquaintance, for his boorishness, or me, for agreeing to let this “owner of all the Burger Kings in New Hampshire” join us.

Those remain in my memory as the Platonic ideal of la petite friture, although a portion I had at J Sheeky in London last September came pretty close on the excellence scale. Recently I found a package of small smelts at an Asian market and decided to haul out my little deep-fryer.

I followed the procedure from Pepin’s Chez Jacques:

[Fortunately these were already completely cleaned, so I didn't have to "push the guts out of the little hole in the lower part of the belly."]

For about a pound of friture, mix 1 TB. flour into 1 cup milk. Add a little salt and pepper. Add the fish, mix well, then lift out. Immediately coat them in plenty of all purpose flour. (Do this right before frying.) Heat enough canola or peanut oil to measure 2-inches in a large skillet to 375-400-degrees. Fry the fishfor 3-4 minutes, moving the fish around with a skimmer, until they are deep brown and very crisp. Drain immediately, sprinkle with fine salt and serve with lemon wedges. I also spiked some mayonnaise with sea salt, crushed garlic and grated Meyer lemon zest as a dipping sauce.

Very cold, dry champagne is the perfect accompaniment. Fast-food restaurant owners? Not so much.

Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 9:41 pmand is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.