Bonito Bites (Fish Bites)

Fish for Easter is a must for us, especially on Good Friday. I won't eat meat on Good Friday. Mat thinks it's weird & religious but like I tell him it's tradition!! My family has always done it, so it is tradition to me & I am sticking to it!! Mat loves fish so it's not a problem I think he just uses it to tease me mainly. 

Growing up Easter was always a great time for our family. Of course there were Easter eggs, but most importantly there was fishing. When we were young kids our great grandparents Nanna & Pop would always take us fishing down the creek on our farm to try to catch something. It was pretty simple back then. A cane pole, a float usually at bit of cork or a piece of cut up thong, some line & a hook with some garden worm dug up from the garden. We would sit down there for hours hoping for a yellow belly, but mostly us kids caught bobbies. We would then come home & cook up our feast. If we didn't catch any, sometimes we would be lucky enough to have some whiting fillets caught by great uncle Keith from Hervey Bay. In the later years Uncle Dawson (Fred) would always come down for a fish as well at Easter. Now days it has progressed to trying to catch a Saratoga in the barra dam on a lure, but either way it is just fun!!

I remember when we were kids on one Good Friday my brother came out of the kitchen snacking on some Devon & when mum saw him she was horrified & said you can't eat that it's Good Friday. The look of shock on his face was priceless!! I would of thought that would be enough to scar him for life to only eat fish on Good Friday, but I am not sure he holds up the tradition!!

So it's with my sense of tradition that I insisted we only have fish on Good Friday this year while camping too. Luckily we had plenty of supplies & ended up having salmon for lunch & fish & chips cooked over the gas for dinner. I made a beer batter & we had whiting fillets. Sorry no photos as it was too dark. But I did have batter left over & we had the Bonito fillets in the engel freezer that Mat had caught so we decided to make fish bites for lunch the next day as well. They turned out great & we served them with fresh lemon, aioli & sweet chilli sauce with lots if salt. 

We also went fishing  for Easter & caught some great black bream, more on that in our next post. 

Bonito Bites   

Ingredients 

 - Bonito fillets or any fish fillets. 

- Cornflour for dusting

- 1 cup of plain flour

- 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder 

- 1/2 to 3/4 of a beer

- salt & pepper

- oil for frying we used vegetable 1.5L

- any sauce you want to serve with it Aioli worked great. 

Directions

- pour the oil into a deep fryer or deep saucepan & place on high to warm up. You want to fry at about 180 degrees. I usually just test the oil with a drop of batter to see if it's hot enough. 

- for the batter, whisk the plain flour, baking powder, salt, pepper & beer together until you get a thick batter in a bowl. 

- dice the fish fillets into bite size pieces. 

- dust the fish pieces in corn flour. 

- place the fish pieces in the batter. 

- slide the fish pieces up the side of the bowl to remove an excess batter & place gently into the hot oil. Always drop the pieces away from yourself so you don't splash hot oil on yourself. 

- fry for 5-6 minutes until crunchy & browned. 

- remove from oil with a slotted spoon & drain on paper towel. 

- sprinkle over some sea salt. 

- serve with lemon wedges & your choice of dipping sauce. 

It is best to do this in batches so you don't overcrowd the pot & reduce the temperature of the oil. I had to do 4 batches as we were only using gas & it was a bit windy. This would be yummy with any type of fish. Tartar or seafood sauce are other options for dipping sauces. I hope you all had a great Easter & may be started some traditions of your own.