The Whitebait story

During the holidays by father gave me a pound and a half of whitebait to bring back to the flat in Dunedin. I was STOAKED! I mean whitebait is expensive... I could sell that off for $30, which I really did consider, however I thought that my flat would enjoy it. My bringing whitebait back to the flat, it allowed me to provide for the flat and give my share by contributing. My flatmates come from farms so they are constantly providing meat for us. I was so excited to be able to finally give something. Especially whitebait... I have full respect for the bag full dad had given me. Do you know how hard those little white slimy creatures are to catch! Whenever I have tried to catch them they NEVER swim into my net! So trying to get the whitebait back to Dunedin was a little bit of an issue. As it is a nine hour drive back I had to make sure I could keep the whitebait as frozen as possible. That involved wrapping it in newspaper with MANY layers!! And sourcing a little chilly bin! Luckily when I arrived in Dunedin it was still cold and well... half frozen! I was very excited to cook the whitebait for the flat, especially because I had never cooked it before. It was always mum or grandma who cooked it. A couple of my flatmates had never had whitebait before. It is very much a west coast speciality so I was very proud to be cooking them something that came from my home and a thing that had caused such a culture to arise in my area. Before I began to cook I had to ring up grandma just to check how I was to do it. Once I had sorted out the recipe... to my surprise I had never actually realised just how easy it was to make a patty! So I began cooking. I experimented with the size of the patties, how much whitebait I should put in and learning when the best time was to flip them. As much as I tried I could NOT at all get them to look as perfect as grandmas do! I tried and tried but my patties were certainly not circles. O well it’s the taste that counts. I decided that I would cook mash potato and minted peas to go with the patties as that’s what Grandma always does. I went outside and picked a lemon from the neighbour’s tree, you can’t have a whitebait patty without lemon. As I was doing that I suddenly thought to myself that we definitely need bread. Thankfully there was a fresh loaf there and it was WHITE! My mother says that you ALWAYS must have white bread with your patties. Once I had finished cooking I served it up to my flatmates. Some of them were eager to try and a few were a bit unsure about the eyes and fins looking up at them from their plate. Over all I think the whitebait was a success. Only one of my flatmates didn’t like it, which didn’t worry me as it gave me a whitebait sammie for the next day!! I was very glad it had gone well and very happy that I could contribute to the flat, bringing a speciality from home.