Breakfast Snapper

This can be done with any fish fillet, it just so happens that with snapper abundant over the winter, this breakfast is with snapper. I love a good soft egg laid across an egg washed snapper morsel.

A fond childhood memory, is coming home from a successful early morning fishing expedition in the old ply dory with a couple of good snapper, or kahawai for the breakfast pan.

Unaccustomed as I am to silence we were taught the best way to sneak up on a shallow mooching snapper was to embrace the stealth and quietly lob a Stray Line Anchovy into a gut or the leading edge of a reef or structure. Leaving the reel in free spool mode let the fish pick up the bait and thumb out line for a good few seconds, then lock up the reel, lift the rod tip, and with the good graces of Tangaroa the bait thief is hooked.

The battle on and the silence broken, the son of the fisherman taunts and goads what must be a ginormous deep-sea monster. Free from parental oversight (and to be fair given it was the 70’s no lifejacket either) the cuss words of his elder generation helps to quell the prey. Battle over and beautiful iridescent and brilliant turquoise spots contrast the delicate pink body of the snapper now in the bilge of the boat, soon to be breakfast. A great morning fishing for the table.

An avoidable and well learnt lesson from this particular crusade and something not forgotten. On a still windless cloudless morning in a quiet bay where home is only mere metres from the water’s edge, sound travels great distances, through walls and into the sun lounge where mum could hear every cuss word from my great battle. Needless to say but worthy of mention, it doesn’t matter what flavor soap it is…..it all tastes bad!

 

Quick n easy so here goes:

Ingredients:

Fish Fillet

Corn flour

One Egg or more as required

 

Method:

  • Take your fillet and towel dry, then dust with corn flour.
  • The bag method for dusting is ideal here.
  • Depending on your actual fillet size you can cook whole or cut into morsels
  • Remove fillet from corn flour and set aside.
  • Add one egg to the corn flour mix and whisk into a thin batter, adding more egg or more corn flour as required to get a thin consistency.
  • Add dusted fillet to the egg batter, submerge and make sure well coated
  • Prepare pan on medium heat that has enough butter or oil to shallow fry the fillet.
  • Place well coated fillets into the hot butter oil mix.
  • Once the batter on edge of fillet crisps up then turn the fillet over. At a guess perhaps 2 minutes on first side and 1 minute on second side.

Remove the cooked fillet from pan and place on a paper towel to rest. Next drop a couple of fresh chook eggs into the pan, flip once bottom is sealed then 30 seconds later you are ready to plate up. First the fillet then lay over the egg. Add seasoning to taste, and because it is breakfast, no salad or greenery required.

Now get stuck in and rid yourself of that previous soap entrée.

Kia a nuit e kai!