Sole for the soul
A fish sandwich and potato pancake are among the fish-fry offerings at Holy Trinity National Catholic Church.
Carol Selway, her mother, Ruth Ann Kovach, and son, Andrew Selway, man the noodles and cabbage station at Holy Trinity National Catholic Church.
Erin Weston and her mother, Elaine Micco, work the potato pancake station at Holy Trinity National Catholic Church.
Potato pancakes are hand cut and cooked in small batches at Holy Trinity.
Mary Czmial and Gert Hooder operate the dessert table at Holy Trinity National Catholic Church in Washington.
These volunteers are among the 30 to 35 volunteers who keep things moving at the Holy Trinity National Catholic Church fish fry.
It’s hard not to know when fish-fry season is upon us. Fast-food restaurants inundate us with nonstop filet-o-whatever commercials, regular restaurants start touting seafood specials, and church social halls and community centers transform into fish-frying, pierogi-stuffing bastions for people abstaining from meat.
This year, Lent runs from Ash Wednesday, Feb. 18, through Holy Thursday, April 2, and for a half-dozen or so Fridays, fish is king.
There are probably as many ways to serve a fish sandwich as there are 40 days in Lent. Some churches fry their fish; others bake it. Some use flaky breading; others use crunchy panko. No matter how you fry it, though, the goal is still the same: Fish-fry dinners give churches a chance to fulfill Lenten duties of abstinence, strengthen the community and generate revenue.
Holy Trinity National Catholic Church in Washington takes advantage of this golden fried opportunity by starting their fish season Jan. 30, two weeks before the traditional start on Ash Wednesday.
Elaine Brown, financial secretary for Holy Trinity, said starting early means they can serve more customers, but it also means more work.
“There’s a lot of prep work,” Brown said. “Some of the women are up here every day of the week.”
In an average Lenten season, Brown estimates they need 30 to 35 people to keep things moving. Planning starts right after Christmas, when volunteers start making pierogies. Brown said they need 1,300 dozen pierogies to get through their nine-week season.
Once Lent begins, volunteers work almost every day of the week. On Tuesdays, they prep the kitchen. On Wednesdays, they make more pierogies and hand cut the homemade noodles for cabbage and noodles and prep the macaroni and cheese. Thursdays are for thawing fish. Fridays start early so that food is ready for the church’s 11 a.m. opening. Saturday is for the cleanup crew to degrease the kitchen.
The church is celebrating 20 years of fish-fry dinners, and Brown says a lot of people have come and gone as volunteers.
“Many of the people who started the fish fry are either gone or are too old,” Brown said. “Every year, we wonder where the volunteers will come from, and then they just appear.”
Volunteering also is generational. Erin Weston and her mother, Elaine Micco, mind the potato pancake cooking. Carol Selway volunteers with her mother, Ruth Ann Kovach, and her 11-year-old son, Andrew Selway.
The biggest seller at Holy Trinity is, of course, the fried-fish sandwich.
“We average 1,300 fish sandwiches on a typical Friday, and with nine Fridays during the Lenten season, that comes out to about 11,700 fish sandwiches,” Brown said.
A second favorite on the menu are the potato pancakes, which are made from scratch. Potatoes are shredded by hand and then cooked in small batches. Also on the menu are clam chowder, french fries, coleslaw and desserts.
Brown said the fish-fry dinners give the church a chance to interact with the community and hold an important fundraiser. Last year, proceeds from the fish fry paid to expand the parking lot. This year, a new floor in the kitchen will be installed.
So how did golden-fried fish sandwiches become synonymous with Lent?
Eating fish on Fridays is more tradition than sacrament, said Father J. Francis Frazer of St. Ann Catholic Church in Waynesburg and St. Thomas Catholic Church in Clarksville.
According to Frazer, early Christians didn’t eat meat on Fridays because that was the day of the week Jesus Christ died. “(Early Christians) gave up meat because meat is something that was sacrificial, so it’s a sacrifice to give it up,” Frazer said. “People would eat fish because they wouldn’t eat meat, so it eventually became communal.”
Until recently, most Catholics didn’t eat meat on any Friday, but reformations made during Vatican II in the ’60s changed the tradition to just Fridays during Lent, the 40-day period between Ash Wednesday and Holy Thursday that leads up to Easter.
Lent lasts 40 days because of the biblical significance of the number; it comes up several times in the Bible, including the amount of days Christ spent fasting in the desert before beginning his ministry.
Frazer said that giving up fish, or really anything for Lent, is about preparing yourself to celebrate the Lord’s resurrection.
“It’s a token ‘thank you’ to Christ for everything he gave up for us,” Frazer said.
They call him “The Cod Father,” and it’s easy to see why. Joe Carothers, director of St. Mary’s Parish fish fry in Cecil, oversees an operation that feeds 1,500 to 2,000 people on a typical Friday during Lent and serves more than 6,000 pieces of fried fish in a season.
In the eight years he’s been running the parish’s annual Lenten fish fry, Carothers has turned what was an average church fish fry into a gourmet event, with a menu that goes beyond the traditional fish sandwich and fries.
“Our strategy is to be a high-end fish fry, to differentiate ourselves from the others,” Carothers said. “We insist on the best ingredients.”
That means things like hand-cut cod instead of cheaper fish like perch; cooking in tri-fry oil that is a combination of grape seed, canola and saffire oils to reduce trans-fats; and using Maryland blue crab for the handmade crab cakes. Even the bread comes from Breadworks.
“I’ve always believed that a fish sandwich is only as good as the bread it’s on,” he said.
St. Mary’s differs from other fish fry dinners thanks to an expansive menu designed for all tastes. This year, the church has added tuna melts made with albacore white tuna to the nontraditional menu that includes seafood pizza, grilled cheese sandwiches, lobster rolls, baked salmon and sea scallops.
Carothers estimates that St. Mary’s fish fry may be the biggest fish fry in Southwestern Pennsylvania, if not at least in the top five.
He attributes its success to running the fish fry as a business, something he says most nonprofits don’t do. For instance, St. Mary’s advertises in newspapers and radio to help bring in business. It sticks to high standards, like using quality ingredients and only prepping food on Thursdays and Fridays to ensure freshness. Patrons can order beer or wine for a donation.
This year, St. Mary’s added an Iron City tasting night, as well as massages.”Someone from the parish council said we’re turning this into a circus. I said to the father, that’s exactly what we want!” Carothers said.
Looking for the best fish-fry dinners in the area? During Lent, the Observer-Reporter will have an interactive map of regional fish frys throughout Washington, Greene and southern Allegheny counties, complete with hours and directions. Visit www.observer-reporter.com/fishfry for more information.
On Thursdays during Lent, keep an eye out for our fish fry of the week in the paper where our staff will spotlight a few area fish fries to bring you a flavor of what to expect.
Also, starting in late February and lasting through Lent, we will have an online contest where you can vote for your favorite fish fry, and the winning church or nonprofit will receive a cash donation.