IN WISCONSIN, THE FRIDAY NIGHT FISH FRY IS AN INSTITUTION.

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On Friday nights all around North Twin Lake—and throughout the state—restaurants, lakeside lodges, and bars offer fish fries. Some are served buffet style, others family style, but the menu is more or less always the same: fried lake fish, coleslaw, potato pancakes or baked potatoes, and store-bought white dinner rolls. These fish fries were a time when the community would really come together to mingle and exchange stories. Outside the Holiday Lodge, where we experienced Friday night fish fries, they would display the biggest catch of the day in a giant icebox. You looked in and saw the fish. It was usually muskie, a freshwater predator known to put up a legendary fight, which alternately thrilled and terrified us kids.

This feast is an homage to those Friday night fish fries. The fish here is less greasy, the salad is lighter, and for dessert I added blueberry mürbeteig, a sort of meringue-topped fruit tart, which was a specialty of my great-aunt Mimi and a point of pride in our family. This isn’t a fancy meal. It’s a backyard, memory-making, family sort of meal.