Chip butties, fishing shanties and other perils of a common language

It all began with Carol Park’s famous recipe for scalloped pineapple, posted on Getting a good start.  That elicited a chain of comments filled with more recipes, British-to-American translations, and general hilarity.  I concluded that we could probably make a good thing out of an international table of equivalents for common foods.  For example:

• The British chip = the American french fry (as in “Ya want fries with that?”)
• The American chip = the British crisp (both irresistible, sold in bags, sacks, or packets depending on geography)
• The British biscuit = the American cookie (The American biscuit at its ethereal best is a marvel of southern cooking and has no equivalent anywhere else in the known world.)
• The British chip butty = well, nothing I’ve ever heard of before, but it seems akin to a fried catfish sandwich, only instead of slapping the catfish between two pieces of bread, slathering it with hot sauce and serving it up with a pile of fries on the side, you apparently slap the fries between two pieces of bread, slather them with malt vinegar (or mayo, according to taste) and omit the catfish.  Astonishing.
• The French . . . who am I kidding.  I’ll bet there’s no French equivalent for any of the delicacies we’ve been talking about.  Their loss.
• I strongly suspect there are some interesting Australian contributions to the discussion, but await input from the Antipodes. 

The chip butty intrigued me—but then one of the cookbooks on my shelf is Carole Eberly’s Potato Chip Cookies & Tomato Soup Cake: Recipes of Americana.  I digress.  The chip butty.  It sounded like something that would be very bad for my body but excellent for my psyche.  I determined to try it on the next gray, cloudy, snowy day in northern Michigan.  I did not have long to wait.

I do not fry things.  I have a well-founded fear of burning my house down.  I had to go to Elk Rapids anyway, so I tossed what was left of my mushy white bread (see scalloped pineapple recipe) into the car and headed to JT’s Fish’n’Shanty Cafe in search of quality fries.

The Fish’n’Shanty is the sort of place where neighborhood business cards are displayed on the counter by the register, the proprietor works in the kitchen in full view of the customers, and everybody’s a regular.

The daily special tempted me greatly, but I was a woman on a mission, and ordered the fish sandwich with fries – no bread. I had brought my own.  In short order, the breadless sandwich was served up, complete with pickle, lemon slice, tartar sauce, malt vinegar and fries.

I set to work. Pulling out my contraband bread, I did the best I could to construct a chip butty with the fries, per Mrs. Uhdd’s instructions.

I was a little dubious at the results, but soldiered on. I tried not just one bite but two. 

I’m pretty sure making a chip butty is not as easy as it sounds, and I feel I should seek professional advice before venturing down this road again. Perhaps I will try stuffing fries into my fried catfish sandwich and slathering the whole thing with malt vinegar and mayo. This is how great cultures meet, mingle and metamorphose into something even greater.

In the meantime, I still had a nice piece of fried cod with a pickle and fries on the side, which I shared with Miss Sadie and the Cowboy on the way home. (It is not that I am generous. They are devious.) We stopped at a secret place that everyone knows about in order to take a secret spy photo of these fish shanties so that those of you unfamiliar with the practice will have an introduction to ice fishing, not to mention a deeper appreciation for the genesis of the name of the Fish’n’Shanty Cafe. The season is upon us, but more about that later.