When Sam and I are feeling rich, we like to live above our means by eating at expensive restaurants. One of our favorite places to spend money is Cafe Palena in Cleveland Park. Every time we go we order one of two things: the roasted chicken or the fry plate. Since we began eating at Cafe Palena the fry plate has evolved from majority french fries and fried onions with homemade mayonnaise, to mostly fried seafood like shrimp, squid, and cod. I have a few precious family memories eating fried fish in Texas. When I was very young, my family had a house in Rockport, Texas, and my mother had the brilliant idea to make fried calamari from the squid usually used as bait. A later summer, one of my father's patients brought him a huge bushel of oysters. First we ate them raw with lemon, then we brought out the Fry Daddy and fried them poolside. What I'm getting at, is with all my history and love of fried fish, I had never made it before, so Sam and I set out to remedy the situation by attempting to recreate the Frito Misto from Palena.One Saturday a few weeks ago, Sam and I went the to the DC fish-market out on the Southwest waterfront and bought 1 pound of shrimp, 1 pound of cod, and 1 pound of squid. We also added onions, broccoli, and lemon slices to our list of things to fry.
The plan to make the Cafe Palena fry plate was simple:
1) clean shrimp, cut cod, squid and vegetables into friable pieces
2) coat the seafood and vegetables in flour
3) heat one whole bottle of vegetable oil in a deep pan
4) Fry everything
5) Eat with condiments
good lord that looks SO good
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