To make Josh Niland’s fish𝄒n𝄒chips you’ll need one unexpected ingredient

We usually eat fish 𝄒n𝄒 chips with the same amount of mindfulness as a morning commute. But, maybe we should approach it with more intent – savouring each chip and marvelling at the golden batter because, according to world-renowned Sydney chef, Josh Niland, it’s “without question one of the most challenging dishes to execute”.

Which is a big claim from the person who invented chips made from fish and calamari eyes, and spent 10 years perfecting the fish charcuterie dish he serves at his three-hatted Saint Peter .

Niland has just released his fourth cookbook, Saint Peter: Chapter & Verse , a grand 450-page book that includes the recipes, essays and philosophy that he and his team have fine-tuned over a decade of running his innovative seafood restaurant in Sydney’s Paddington.

It includes his recipe for fish 𝄒n𝄒 chips, which is served at the bar of The Grand National Hotel , home of the fine diner and hotel run by Julie and Josh Niland.

Niland’s fin-to-tail cooking technique has made him a global sensation and has changed the conversation around fish and seafood. “I wanted to do a fish restaurant that showed there was so much more to fish than the luxurious fillet, and that there were more than just a dozen species in the sea,” he writes, just two of the issues with chefs cooking fish at restaurants.

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He says seafood’s most popular dish is also not immune to issues. “For so long, fish 𝄒n𝄒 chips has been a vehicle to carry aesthetically and texturally compromised fish. The presence of odour and the absence of flavour in a bleached, skinless centre cut of unidentifiable fish are quickly resolved by a crispy golden exterior. If we continue to celebrate the mediocre, however, then the quality that the rare few continue to labour over will quickly become lost.”

Instead? “We believe in the potential that fish 𝄒n𝄒 chips has to create something special – the memory of a moment,” writes Niland.

For him, creating remarkable fried and battered fish involves vodka. As he told Good Food in 2019 : “The more alcohol content means the liquid burns away faster, resulting in a crisp and, most importantly, delicious batter.”

If you want to cook the chips in this way, the recipe needs to be started 3 days ahead.

This is an edited extract from Saint Peter: Chapter & Verse by Josh Niland, published by Hardie Grant Books. Photography by David Loftus.