I decided to make fish and chips on Tuesday night, so I stopped by Safeway to pick up a few ingredients:

Total spent: $7.12
Total before coupons: $8.90
View receipt

Got:

1 bottle of malt vinegar – this is a non-negotiable ingredient when making fish and chips. Cost: $2.77, and worth every penny.
1 can of sweet peas – on sale for $1.15, used one .50/1 coupon that I received in the mail, which doubled. Final cost: .15 cents.
1 pint of whipping cream – marked down by .75 cents, due to the January 8th sell-by date. Fine by me, since I was buying it to use that night! Final cost: $1.54.
1 quart of half and half – I’m taking a break from Coffee-Mate to enjoy some half and half in my coffee. The Safeway brand is .40 cents cheaper, but the only cartons that they had were verging on expiration, so I had to pay more for this kind. Cost: $2.69.

Here’s how it turned out:

I made this as authentic as I could, although not having the same ingredients in the states makes it difficult to capture the taste. First, I took a piece of halibut that a friend gave us, and breaded it in homemade shake ‘n bake, inspired by this recipe. Normally the fish would be deep-fried, but since I don’t have a deep fryer, I just baked it. Then I cut up two small potatoes into chips, soaked them in cold water for about 5 minutes, and then drizzled them in olive oil and fried them in a pan for 10 minutes. I then stuck them on a baking sheet with the fish, and cooked until done.

This was served with a loaf of homemade bread and mushy peas. Most of you are probably thinking, “What on earth are mushy peas?!” This is a side dish traditionally served with fish and chips, and despite the somewhat dubious name, they are very good. You can buy canned mushy peas in England, but obviously I’ve never seen anything like that here. I did a Google search to see if I could find a recipe, and I came across this approximation using frozen/canned peas. The main problem is that mushy peas are always made from dried Marrowfat peas, which I have never seen over here. But I was feeling adventurous, so I figured I’d give the sweet peas a whirl and see how it turned out. Jai liked them, but I didn’t – the sweet flavor is just too strong for me. Guess I’ll be packing dried peas in my suitcase the next time I go back!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 11:46 pm and is filed under Coupon Menu Corner, Safeway. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.