Haute Cuisine

I was alerted to this gastronomical phenomenon by my friend Erik Marcus at Vegan.com. I'm an omnivore, but I think I'd draw the line on this dish. There's no wonder how Paula keeps her lovely figure.



You can probably still see the clip at The Food Network site. I could give you the link, but I figure if you really want to see it, you can find it. You're a resourceful person. Somehow you found your way here.

She's doing it wrong by rolling it in flour, eggs and crumbs. Batter-dipped is the way to go. Just whip up some pancake batter and dunk -- so much easier and it gives a thicker, crunchier, more calorie-dense coating. That's how we did it when I worked at Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips. The tricky part of that job was trying to gently lower a block of batter-dipped frozen fish into the hot oil. About every sixth block would slip out of my fingers and fall in, causing the hot oil to splash up and burn my forearm. That summer I walked around with little scabs all over my arms. I call the fish "blocks" because they were formed into perfect 60° right triangles. You couldn't really call them "fillets." I usually went next door to the Taco Bell for lunch. My boss told me to at least take off the uniform shirt when I do that.

They did have the best dessert there though -- a deep-fried lemon turnover that put the Micky D's apple turnover to shame. I miss those lemon turnovers. And they had these giant "chips" that were the size of monkey-wrench handles. How could that fail?