Playoff eats for Winnipeg Jets fans: Beer-battered jackfish and Cachaça prawns

If the Winnipeg Jets have any rival as this city's most iconic franchise, it would probably be the Salisbury House restaurant chain.

That's why CBC News asked Jayanti Sharma, corporate chef for Salisbury House, to give us some tips on how to prepare her favourite party snacks to go along with this year's playoff games.

Sharma came up with two seafood-themed dishes that combine familiar and easy-to-find ingredients with her south Indian and Caribbean heritage.

Sharma said her family, which originally hails from Hyderabad, India, as well as Trinidad and Barbados, loves the local team.

"My whole family is Jets crazy, it's just one of the most interesting family times. We call family dinners in the middle of the week because there's a Jets game, and I'm totally fine with that, because it just means somebody else is feeding me," she said.

Fort Garry Dark beer-battered jackfish with Tartar sauce

Fish ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. ground black pepper
• Add seasoning you like — maybe a Cajun seasoning!
• 750 mL of beer or approx. 3 bottles
• 1 whole egg

Tartar sauce ingredients:

• 2 cups mayonnaise
• 2 large pickles or if it's sliced (1 1/4 cups)
• Half a red onion
• Salt and pepper
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh dill
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 large juicy lemon
• 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tbsp. honey

All the ingredients for Sharma's recipes can be easily found at your local grocery store. For this recipe, Sharma says she likes to use cornmeal in her beer batters because it gives it an extra crunch.

She also recommends adding an egg to the batter.

"It fluffs up the batter really really nicely, and it keeps it from making giant holes. It's just this consistent, beautiful shell," she said.

The fish, which can be found at many local grocery stores, should be cut in to little one-inch by one-inch nuggets.

"What's really awesome about this fish too is, as much as we love pickerel, and I'm a proud supporter of that, this fish has so much flavour to it, even just by itself, the texture, how flaky it was, it just, it's great."

To prepare the batter, combine the dry ingredients first, then add the liquids and whisk till smooth. Test the batter thickness by dipping your finger in it. If it coats your finger nicely with no running, that's good.

To fry the fish, you can use a deep fryer or a deep frying pan with a couple of inches of oil in the bottom. Heat the oil to about 370 F.

Dust the jackfish nuggets in seasoned flour. Shake them off and place in batter.

Let excess batter drip off, then dip it half-way into the oil. Hold the nugget in the hot oil and let it puff up. Once it does you can let go and let it cook for two minutes.

Take it out of the oil with proper equipment like a fryer basket or tongs. Place it in a bowl lined with paper towel to absorb excess oil.

For the sauce, take the veggie products and dice them up fairly small. Put the mayo in a larger bowl and throw in your veggies.

Add some salt and pepper to taste, squeeze the whole lemon into the bowl, add honey and Worcestershire, mix together and done.

"Because I like sauce so much, I like to put it on the bottom, stack the things on it so I can just scoop it all up," Sharma said.

Finally, before you squeeze the lemon over the fish, Sharma recommends cooking it a little on the barbeque.

"It actually breaks up all of the juice in here and it allows you to just squeeze some beautiful stuff on here," she said.

Cachaça prawns

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs. of frozen or fresh prawns
• 2 limes, cut in half
• 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
• 1/2 cup cold butter, cubed
• 1/4 cup canola or olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup Cachaça rum
• 1.5 cups of sliced red onion
• 2 tbsp. minced garlic

These tasty little prawns are quick to cook, so they won't distract you too much from the game, Sharma said.

Sharma says she likes prawns with the tail on because it adds an interactive (and messy) element to eating them.

Start with a hot pan. Heat the oil and 1/4 cup of butter in a large pan. Then sauté the minced garlic for one minute before adding the red onions. Let them brown and cook down.

"This is one of my favourite things. In my culture, we call this tarka, and it's just the basics of oil and garlic and onions," Sharma said.

Toss in the prawns before the garlic starts to burn. Let them cook on each side to get some flavour.

Take off the heat and pour in the rum. Take barbecue lighter and set the alcohol on fire to cook off. Once on fire, place the pan back on heat source and let the flame disappear.

"It adds a flavour, but actually the alcohol is burning off. And what it also does is it deglazes the bottom. So I want all those flavourful bits from all this sauteing we've been doing," Sharma said.

Once the flame is gone, take off the heat and season if needed. Add the rest of the cold butter and stir until it turns into a creamy-looking sauce.

Add the fresh cilantro and squeeze the limes on the shrimp.

• More on the Winnipeg Jets playoff run.

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