basket food

basket food, noun.  1. Food, preferably fried, served in a basket and best eaten with your fingers and paired with a good beer.  2. A little piece of heaven.

The other day Lukas asked me what we were having for dinner.  I reported that we would be having fish nuggets {breaded fried tilapia}, home-made garlic fries, and corn on the cob.  "Yay," he said, "We're having basket food.  Just what I was craving."  When we eat out basket food is usually beer-battered fish and chips or some times even a burger, but at home it's almost always fish nuggets.  This is a fun dinner too because we cook it together.  Lukas is the master seasoner and breader while I fry them up.  

Here's what we do... first I rinse off the fish and cut it into manageable pieces.  For the two of us I usually get just under a pound of fish.  This makes a ton, but it's yummy!  

Lukas seasons the bread crumbs with garlic salt, parsley and italian seasoning.  He's pretty liberal with them all.  Then comes the breading.  The fish pieces are dipped first in flour and then egg and lastly the bread crumb mix.  I heat up the oil and fry them - just a few minutes on each side cooks them throughly.  

While the fish was cooking up in the oven I had going some frozen fries from the grocery store {so I cheated a little and they're not totally "home-made"}.  I heated up about a tablespoon of olive oil in another frying pan.  I tossed in a ton {ok, maybe 5 cloves} of garlic and a bit of parsley.  

This I heated till the garlic started to get fragrant and just a little golden.  Then I tossed the fries with the garlic-olive oil mixture and added some shredded parmesan cheese.  So, simple yet so yummy.

And that, my friends, is basket food!