Recipe: Saint Peter’s Crumbed Garfish Sandwich Reeled Sydney In for Brunch

Before the global acclaim, award-winning cookbooks and the move to The Grand National Hotel, the original Saint Peter served brunch on weekends. For many Sydney diners, it was the only way to experience the groundbreaking fish eatery’s fin-to-scale cookery without a dinner reservation. 

But in the burgeoning age of camera-eats-first, Saint Peter’s brunch menu was also a vehicle for photogenic dishes with “a certain luxury and familiarity”, writes Josh Niland in Saint Peter, the chef’s staggering chronicle of the restaurant’s first decade. Cue the scrambled eggs adorned with marron from Manjimup in Western Australia, those golden toasted crumpets ferrying buttery sea urchin, and this simple but effective crumbed fish sandwich. 

“Warmly nostalgic and comforting, it was just as popular with the kitchen team as it was with our guests for its speed and high-impact taste,” writes Niland. “So many different species sat between those two cloudy white squares of bread over the years, but none could compete with the striking visual of a garfish from Corner Inlet in Victoria.”

Though the sandwich is now committed to the restaurant’s ever-growing archive, it’s one of several dishes featured in Saint Peter that you can easily recreate at home. The key to success, according to Niland, is to pan-fry the dish in ghee on the stovetop. “Avoid the deep fryer at all costs as it would detract from the elegant taste of the garfish”, he writes. “And be sure to season with sea salt flakes and a little black pepper.

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Saint Peter’s crumbed garfish sandwich

Serves 4
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 5 minutes

Ingredients

4 x 200g garfish, scaled, gutted and gilled
150g plain flour
4 eggs, lightly whisked
120g white panko breadcrumbs
400ml ghee
8 slices soft white bread
Freshly cracked black pepper, to season

Yoghurt tartare (combine all ingredients, makes about 500g)

375g plain yoghurt
3 large French shallots, diced
1 tbsp small salted capers, rinsed, dried and finely chopped
60g coarsely chopped cornichons
2 tbsp finely sliced flat-leaf parsley leaves

Method

Assuming you're right-handed (otherwise reverse these directions), place the garfish on a chopping board with its head to your left, tail to your right and open cavity facing up. Draw your knife down the backbone of the fish from the head to the tail, cutting along one side of the bone. Cut again to deepen the initial cut, carefully cutting all the way through to open up the fish, leaving the tail intact.

Repeat on the other side of the backbone, then use kitchen scissors to snip out the backbone and form an unpunctured rectangle shape, with the head on and tail intact. Use a knife to cut the rib bones off the garfish and then fish pliers to remove pin bones. Repeat for the other garfish.

Place the flour in a bowl, the eggs in another and the breadcrumbs in a third.

Holding by the tail and head, dip a garfish in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs, pressing gently to coat well. Place on a tray and repeat with the remaining fish.

Heat half of the ghee in a large frying pan over a high heat. When hot, add two fish to the pan and fry in ghee for about 1 minute until crisp and golden, then turn and cook the other side for a further minute or so. Sprinkle the fish liberally with sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper and place on a wire rack. Repeat for the two remaining fish.

Once all cooked, cut the collars that sit on either side of the head off the fish and then cut the garfish in half, so you have a tail half and a head half. Stack these two halves together with the head on top.

Cut the crusts off the bread. Spread some yoghurt tartare sauce over four of the slices from edge to edge, then arrange the stacked garfish on top. Add the remaining sauce on top and then the remaining slices of bread.

Serve with the golden edges of the garfish showing around the edges of the bread and the little tails and heads exposed.

This is an edited extract from Saint Peter: Chapter & Verse by Josh Niland. Published by Hardie Grant Books. Photography by David Loftus. Available now (RRP $80).