Fishing Monthly Magazines : Twice cooked potato scallops in ginger beer batter

Back in the day, we Bulimba State School year eight girls (back when year eight was a primary school grade) had to travel by tram to East Brisbane State School for ‘domestic science’ classes. When we were finally let out of class, we’d all gallop across the road to the local fish and chip shop for two shillings worth of potato scallops to eat while we waited for the return tram. In those days, that amounted to six scallops. Boy, those scallops were good. I can still remember the golden, crispy, salty taste of those scallops.

A bag of Sebago potatoes still brings back memories and the urge to make potato scallops. As you do, I fiddled with my basic batter recipe quite a bit over the years. I made changes such as cooking the potato slices slightly (par boiling), cutting back on the flour and making up the flour quantity with cornflour for a lighter batter and changing out the flavour of the liquid in the batter using either apple juice, cider or ginger beer.

The ingredients for the batter – 1 cup self-raising flour, 1/2 cup cornflour, 2 eggs, 1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda, salt, pepper, 250ml ginger beer and potatoes (not pictured).

Finely slice (3-4mm) a couple of washed and scrubbed potatoes. Place the potato slices in a saucepan of cold water and bring to a boil. When the water is boiled, remove the saucepan from the heat and drain the water. Place the potato slices onto a paper t

In a large bowl, add the cornflour to the flour. Crack the eggs into the bowl and add the bicarb soda. Grind a generous amount of salt and about a teaspoon of pepper into the bowl.

Pour the ginger beer into the bowl. I usually pour about three quarters of a bottle (250ml) into the bowl, but you can add the remainder to change the consistency of the batter.

Whisk the contents of the bowl thoroughly to make the scallop batter. If the batter seems very thick, add more ginger beer, a little at a time, until the batter sticks well to the potato slices.

Coat each potato slice in a little flour.

Dip each flour coated potato slice into the ginger beer batter.

Deep-fry the potato slice in hot rice bran oil – you can also use canola oil or peanut oil. Deep-fry until the scallop is golden brown and slightly puffy. You may need to turn the scallop over during the deep-frying process.