A couple of months ago (yes, I am still catching up!) NOLA mayonnaise asked the question:
“We’d love to know what’s your family favourite and if we could encourage you to add a modern twist to it with NOLA Mayonnaise?”
“NOLA recently partnered up with local foodie Sithembiso Ndashe (Ndash) – founder of Ndash Food Concepts. He is all about experimenting with new age modern twists to popular Mzansi recipes – and his mom, Nozibele, to #CreateAStir and inspire ordinary South Africans to add their own personal twist to the dishes they love.”
One of our favourite comfort food recipes is beer-battered hake and chips, like what you find in a good ol’ fashioned English pub. So we thought it would be a great idea to make fish sliders. And then, how about experimenting with a few NOLA mayonnaise inspired condiments? Sounds like a fun way to #CreateAStir, don’t you think?
So I’m going to dive right in.
We (and with “we” I mean my husband Jan – feel free to follow his culinary adventures on www.socialsavage.co.za,) used his ‘usual’ beer batter recipe, really quick and easy!
Beer-battered Hake
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- Salt and pepper (you can use additional herbs and spices as well)
- 1 ¼ cup beer of your choice (I prefer a pilsner or lager)
- 4 portions of white fish (I used Basa)
- Enough oil for deep frying
First, combine the dry ingredients in a bowl. Next, pour in the beer, and whisk until smooth.
Jan used hake medallions, the bite-sized bits. Dunk in the beer batter and deep-fry in preheated oil until golden brown. As easy as that.
Leave to drain to get rid of the excess oil.
At the same time, because he is fantastic at multi-tasking, he made a second batch of fish medallions. This was seasoned with fish spice* and pan-fried. Quick and easy.
MEANWHILE….
I made our NOLA condiments to go with the beer-battered fish and fish-spice sliders. And yes, the chips need some special treatment as well!
Garlic Mayonnaise
This is so simple, there actually isn’t a recipe! It is exactly what it says, a dash (or more – depending on your taste) or garlic added to some #NOLA Mayonnaise. It is best to leave this to stand for a bit, then the flavours can really develop. You can also add some parsley or other seasonings (I added a liiiiitle bit of white pepper), but in general, this is good enough as it is!
Next up….
Homemade Tartare Sauce
This must be my absolute favourite. There is no way that store-bought tartare sauce can beat this! This recipe was borrowed from the BBC Food website, we use it often:
200 ml mayonnaise
3 tbsp capers, drained and chopped
3 tbsp gherkins, drained and chopped
1 small shallot, finely chopped
a squeeze of lemon juice
3 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
flaked sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Mix together all of the ingredients in a small bowl and serve straight away or store in the fridge until needed.
And yes, that is really it!
Last, but not least….
Asian-inspired mayonnaise
This was a bit of a ‘moer by’ (just throw stuff together) recipe. I was just tasting as I went along, to make sure the flavours work.
200 ml mayonnaise
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon finely chopped garlic
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon grated ginger
a dash of lime juice
Mix all the ingredients together – you can add a little more garlic or ginger (or anything else for that matter) if you want to!
All these sauces can be prepped in advance, and even left overnight to ‘develop’.
So now it is time to put it all together!
We had the beer-battered fish slider with the homemade tartare sauce, and the pan-fried spiced fish with the Asian-inspired mayonnaise.
The shoestring fries were served with a some garlic mayonnaise. If I do say so myself, this was absolutely delish! How to jazz up your fish ‘n chips and #CreateAStir!
We’d like to thank NOLA for treating us to this lovely #CreateAStir Hamper.
*NOMU’s Oriental Seasoning