Directions: |
Directions:After cleaning the fish {disclaimer: I NEVER learned that skill from him as I always found it completely smelly and disgusting}, put them in a plastic bag with either bread crumbs, corn meal or whatever coating you like; I believe my Dad used Shake N’ Bake---and shake till all the fish have a nice coating.
Fry in a skillet in an inch or so of oil {kind of oil, don’t know, maybe peanut} till very brown (and crunchy). Drain on a plate covered with paper towels to absorb excess oil.
And…..bon appetite! Good eatin’ fish, straight from the lake! |
Personal
Notes: |
Personal
Notes:
Backstory: In addition to hopefully inspiring great cooking or fine dining experiences, this cookbook idea is also a wonderful opportunity to tell food stories and help keep alive vivid family memories of cherished ones who are no longer with us, such as my beloved parents, Fred and Evelyn Malina. My dad was a wonderful character who loved nothing more than a good meal, a great ear of corn, or a perfect tomato. The immense pleasure he derived from life’s smaller pleasures was instructive and wise---his visceral enjoyment of life made you want to be with him and spend time with him. I think many people who knew him felt this way too---he was both joyful and a joy. He was also one of the funniest people I ever met. I knew if I got a big laugh out of my Dad, it must’ve been REALLY funny. He was always on the look-out for life’s absurdities and like a lot of funny people, was a great mimic. He also laughed loud and often. His biggest laugh could probably be measured on the Richter’s scale, a real thing of nature, and was often accompanied by tears. Whenever I hear of something funny to this day I always think of him and wish I could call him and recount what I’ve heard. Humor was a great thing we shared but coming up a close second was our mutual love of the fried fish he made.
My dad was not a cook. He could make fried eggs and toast the way he liked it: dry rye toast that he always ate with slices of a hard cheese like gouda on top. Interestingly, this is exactly how his Dad, Louis Malina, ate his toast, and how I like my toast too. But other than eggs and toast, fried fish was the only thing he ever made by himself.
One of the greatest pleasures my Dad had, and one of the best ways to spend time with him was to go fishing with him in the lake behind our house in Mount Kisco, New York. We either fished straight off our crooked wooden dock or out in the rowboat. Either way, the bait was always live worms. The state stocked the lake with Lake Bass, Pickerel, Catfish and one of our favorites, Sunfish, or Sunnies as we called them.
My Dad was the opposite of a catch and release fisherman. He kept everything he caught, cleaned it himself, and fried them up to a crispy golden brown---just how he (and I) liked them best. There was nothing particularly restive about fishing in our lake. It was stocked with so many fish you just cast your rod and within seconds you caught a fish. It was quick gratification fishing, just how we liked it. Fishing with your Dad and my husband, Richard, in the Sierras where we’d use salmon roe and often not catch one single fish always made me nostalgic for fishing with my Dad, in our lake, with worms! I will go to my grave believing in my heart: fish like worms!
Frying up his catch was the only real thing he made in the kitchen that I can remember, and it gave him immense pride to cook them himself and eat them. I know it gave him great pleasure to see how much I loved to eat them too. They were so crispy we often were able to eat the bones too---and sunnies have a lot of bones!
There was no fish too small to be cleaned, fried and eaten. A fish that was 3 inches in length was still “good eatin’” to him.
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This recipe for Fred Malina's (Papa)’s Fried Sunnies is from