Surprising JEWISH origins of FISH & CHIPS (authentic British style)

Do you want authentic British style fish and chips? You're asking why should a rabbi be the one to teach how to make it? It's a Jewish dish. Yes, I'm going to explain to you as we cook. Let's make it. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I want to tell you about a harrowing situation that I had recently. I was looking for fish and chips at a kosher establishment because I keep strictly kosher and I kept being surprised, heartbroken, disappointed that people were giving me something that was called on the menu fish and chips, but it was tilapia in breadcrumbs. First of all, tilapia the tilapia is like the instant coffee of the sea. Okay, I don't want tilapia ever. Okay, when I have fish and chips, it should taste like the North Atlantic, not like a suburban conference center. Okay, I don't want tilapia and especially not in breadcrumbs. That's not It has to be with a nice thick bready batter. Okay, so we're going to make the real fish and chips, British style, but I'm going to explain to you also why that's really Jewish style. Okay, we're going to start with the batter. A lot of people refer to this as beer batter. It doesn't have to be beer. The point of the beer is that the carbonation froths it up. So, I use seltzer. Can't get more Jewish than seltzer, right? Okay, so a little bit of flour a little bit of salt a little bit of pepper Just like that. Baking powder also helps that the batter should get puffy. Now, we're going to add seltzer. Now, we're going to whisk it up. Should be like a pancake batter, really, as far as consistency. Okay. Now, it's nice and liquidy, the batter. We're going to let the batter sit a little bit while we are frying our potatoes. Okay, you see what we did here is potato sticks like this, and they've been blanching overnight. Blanching just means they've been soaking in cold water in order to pull out some of the starch. It just makes them more firm, and they taste better, have a better texture after you fry them. I actually just don't want to get splashed by a bunch of oil. So, I'm going to go like this. Okay, we're going to drop this in. The french fries, we call them America, but they're called chips here. They are frying now. I told you that fish and chips is a Jewish dish, and that to some of you might be an outrageous claim. So, I just want to explain to you the history. It was after the Spanish expulsion, there were Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal who came to England, and they prepared fish in this style. They would fry batter-dipped fish on Friday afternoon before Shabbos, and then eat it cold on Shabbos day. So, the entire idea of batter-dipped fried fish came to England from Sephardic Jews who had come from Spain and Portugal. Now, the chips part didn't happen until a few hundred years later. A lot of people don't know that when Thomas Jefferson was the United States ambassador to France, before he was the third president of the United States, he made a trip to Europe in the 1780s, and he stopped in London and he wrote that while he was in London he ate fish made in the Jewish fashion, which meant batter dipped and fried. These are nice. Chips. So, I mentioned to you before that at first it was just the fried fish by itself that the Spanish and Portuguese Jews brought over to Britain. When did the chips become part of it? Okay, so I'll tell you about that, too. That was also Jewish ingenuity. There was an Ashkenazi Jew, Joseph Malin, who had a restaurant on the east side of London and in the 1860s he got the idea to fry potatoes, make chips, and serve them together with the batter dipped fried fish and thus became fish and chips. Okay, now we're going to do the fish. This is very, very important. I got cod. It really, really, really has to be cod or haddock. It really only has the right taste and texture, especially after it's fried. You can make these in any shape that you want, but I'm going to make them short. Not going to make them super long. Okay, so it's pretty simple. Put it in the batter. So, I'm just going to put down some paper towel right here. Now, if we were being super authentic, what we would do is we would put this all in newspaper, like at a real chippy, but we're going to do it like this. And it's ready to eat, but here's how we're going to dress it. No ketchup. No, there's no ketchup involved here. What we have here is vinegar, not just regular vinegar, malt vinegar, okay? We have to use authentic malt vinegar. Splash it all over. Some salt. And I'm going to try first the chips. Perfect perfect texture. >> [snorts] >> And that's because we blanched them, okay? You would not get those results if you didn't do that. Now, some people say you make mizoynes on this, some people say shihako. I eat it for the fish. The batter is just to hold it together. >> [snorts] >> This is real fish and chips. It's cod. It's battered. Seltzer battered. It has the right crunch and crispiness. It's hearty, robust. It's filling. Anyway, authentic British fish and chips with the surprising Jewish origins. It was Sephardic Jews who first fried up the batter-dipped fish. It was [snorts] an Ashkenazi Jew who combined the fried potatoes with the fried fish. And uh now it's a beloved dish all over the world. You don't have to be British to enjoy it. You don't have to be Jewish to enjoy it. And please, now that I showed you how to do it, no more tilapia in bread crumbs, okay? No more. All right. L'chaim. Enjoy.