It puzzles me ever so slightly that fish fingers exist. This is because, as one can quickly realise after thinking about it for more than twelve seconds, fish fingers are really rather silly things.
What is a fish finger? I once alleged that fish fingers are the fingers of weatherman Michael Fish, obtained by placing him in a refrigerator until David Frost gnaws them off. This just wasn’t true. I sincerely apologise to the chaps at Birds Eye, and would like to impress that I never slept with Captain Birdseye’s granddaughter.
As a matter of fact, fish fingers are in no way digit-related – consist of white fish, which is processed within an inch of its life, and then battered, and covered with breadcrumbs. The processing entails being chucked in the bin and then replaced by unidentifiable fluff, and the battering is apparently done with a big stick. The breadcrumbs are orange.
That’s right, the breadcrumbs are orange. Orange, I tell you, orange. Just go and read that a few more times to emphasise how ridiculous it is, because it would be silly for me to do the copy-and-paste thing any more.
Oh, it’s so absurd, very absurd, but also very true. They put food colouring in the breadcrumbs to make them orange, so they don’t resemble breadcrumbs.
Since when has bread been orange? The only thing that should be orange is, um, oranges. Not bread. Orange breadcrumbs are utterly sacrilegious. It’s a sodding disgrace, and Captain Birdseye should be hung, drawn and quartered, methinks. Even though me isn’t really that sure what being hung drawn and quartered means. No doubt Captain Birdseye knows, for he makes the fingers by hanging, drawing, and quartering white fishes.
Somehow, I ate fish fingers a few days ago. On Monday, in fact. This very rare, believe it or not – mine is a family of people who munch on quinoa and peppers and lentils, and never eat a pizza pie. Thus, I was disproportionately excited about eating the processed fish covered in crusty orange stuff – I hadn’t tried any for quite literally several years.
The fish fingers were hot, as one would expect from foodstuffs that have come out of the oven. I necked a morsel, and ooh – it was like being a fire blanket. Then, idiotically, I decided to have another big chunk, and it was like being a fire blanket all over again – in a matter of seconds, I had forgotten that they were hot. Maybe this is because Captain Birdseye is putting some sort of drug in them…
I didn’t particularly like them. They were OK with HP sauce, but I might as well have just eaten HP sauce instead of bothering with the fish fingers. I certainly don’t feel left out as a sheltered, lentil-fed snob – I’d definitely prefer to eat some nice lentils, with perhaps some quinoa on the side.
At least it was an excuse to eat brown sauce. That bottle of the stuff in our cupboard is very rarely touched, since it doesn’t go well with lentils.
This evening, I ate some salmon fish cakes, which are a bit like fish fingers, but in the shape of the fingers of an outrageously fat person. More like palms, or ears, really. They had salmon in them, too, being salmon fish cakes and all that. They were pretty tasty; certainly a whole lot tastier than those disappointing fingers of cod.
Of course, I’m sure you can get salmon fingers. I bet they’re equally delicious – the shape really doesn’t matter. Don’t you go thinking that I’m “shapeist”.
I think it’s ridiculous that fish fingers are so called, when they have nothing to do with fingers. It’s outrageously misleading. Think of all the poor young infants who have been put off the food, worried that it is part of that weather man, when in fact Michael Fish was in no way harmed in their production. Also, think of the anti–Michael Fish extremists who have stockpiled fish fingers in a bid to cause pain to his hands. In the USA they’re called “fish sticks”, and that name should be universal.
Finally, I’d like to point out that you should always turn off your George Foreman grill after using it to cook fish fingers.
Of course, in true pizza pie–shunning family fashion, we have a Rayburn into which we can shovel coal and enjoy the bliss of a perpetually-aflame beast that heats the water and house all the time without needing to make us worry about the prospect of fire. But some do not, so I’m just taking this opportunity to impress the significant safety hazards that cooking fish fingers with Mr Foreman’s invention can present.
Anyway: at the end of the day, I’d rather have a biscuit. You could even have some fish with the biscuit, assuming it’s a water biscuit and the fish is smoked salmon. Yum.
I definitely need to stop writing about food. It’s insane. Tomorrow, lampshades. No, lampshades is even sillier. Maybe staples. No, they’re silly too. Oh, whatever – you’ll find out tomorrow. Hopefully I will think of a non-silly topic. I would ask you to speak your mind and have your say and tell me what to write about, but seeing as there aren’t any of you that would we like talking to a brick wall. Only sillier.