I like breaded scampi. I catch too many dogfish. Last weekend I caught dozens, all went back but one was deeply hooked so I tried an experiment. It worked, so I’ll share it here.
Take one dogfish, skin and fillet it to remove the backbone. I always freeze dogfish for a week but some would say that is unnecessary. Anyway, I did.
Thaw the fillets and slice into scampi-sized pieces.
Beat an egg and put in a bowl. Put to one side.
Make a mug of breadcrumbs by whizzing up a few slices in a blender.
Mix in a teaspoon of garlic salt, a fierce grinding of black pepper and a violent shake of cayenne pepper. Forgot to mention, if you have some parsley, add a small handful to the breadcrumbing process and whiz that in too.
Pour some cooking oil into a pan to a depth of 2cm and heat to 190C (or when a cube of bread goes brown in 30 seconds)
Dip your fake scampi in the egg then in the breadcrumb mix then drop in the hot oil. After a minute flip them over. After another minute they should be brown and crispy. Remove and drain on some kitchen paper. They should look like this and taste extremely good, with or without embellishment of tartar sauce or lemon juice.