Whitebait Fritters

November 7, 2000

We headed north from our home city Christchurch to Hanmer Springs and spent a very relaxing four days up to our necks in hot water, lolling about in thermal pools of varying temperatures. The trip by road took us 90 minutes with a stopover at an historic country pub along the way for a bit of midday sustenance. We visited the museum at Hanmer and discovered that when our forebears took the same journey early last century, it took 6 hours - a train trip from Christchurch and then the last couple of dozen miles by road.

According to the literature that would have lured them to the springs from 1859 onwards, the sulphuretted hydrogen content of the water supposedly penetrated the skin and had a somnolent effect on the nerve endings. I don't know about the veracity of this theory, but certainly hot pools are very relaxing.

With all this R&R we thought we'd better get the adrenaline pumping again so we went on a jet boat ride on one of the rivers. We were hurtled 10 miles down the Waiau at speeds of up to 60 miles an hour. The driver aimed the boat at any obstacle along the way - tree, rock, riverbank stone - then swerved to avoid it at the last possible moment. We hung on to the rail in front of us with icy hands and loved every moment of it. Every so often we were flung through a 360-degree turn. We made the return trip at similar speed and then skimmed over the shallows - water only about three or four inches deep.

I haven't exactly spent a lot of time in the kitchen this past week, but before we set out on our spa break, we feasted on whitebait.

New Zealand whitebait are tiny, almost transparent fish about an inch and a half long, not much thicker than a piece of string. Whitebait catch consists primarily of the young of three species: inanga (Galaxias maculatus), koaro (G. brevipinnis) and banded kokopu (G. fasciatus); inanga is by far the most commonly caught species. Check out New Zealand's Department of Conservation to read more about them.

We were dining at a restaurant the other night and the menu had a whitebait fritter - containing 100g of whitebait - for $NZ28. As I had seen whitebait at my fishmongers for $7.50 per 100g I told the spouse we'd be better off preparing our own.

Next day I discovered the fish shop had dropped the price to $6.50 per 100g.

"We're having a price war with the place down the road," said the fishmonger. "We're not making any profit, I tell you."

His loss was my gain so I bought 300g. An extravagance, but then we have them about once a season and I reason that it's cheaper than eating out. I'm told the going price last season was $8.75 per 100g - nearly $90 a kilo.

Now a whitebait fritter has to be full of whitebait. I went to a very upmarket dinner in a marquee in a forest near Rotorua early this year. Whitebait fritters were on the menu. Only one of the guests I spoke to found a whitebait in their fritter - and then only one! Appalling catering by a top tourist resort hotel and they probably charged the host the earth.

My fritters were simplicity itself. You can use this recipe for any fritter where you just want to bind the main ingredient and not end up with a wodge of cooked batter.

Whitebait fritters

2 large eggs
1 tablespoon cornflour
salt
freshly ground pepper
300g drained whitebait
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon light olive oil

Beat the eggs and whisk in the cornflour, salt and pepper and add the whitebait.

Heat the oil abd butter in a pan and spoon in some of the batter mix - making fritters about 3 inches wide. Cook till golden on one side, flip and cook on the other side. Keep warm on a plate in a hot oven.

Serve with wedges of lemon. A nice accompaniment is freshly cooked asparagus spears.