If it ain't broke - deep fry it?

This past weekend was my grandmother's 80th birthday. (Happy birthday, Grandma!) We had a two-day celebration involving museum-visiting, shrub-planting, cat-doting, and of course, lots of yummy food. One of the dinners was rather impromptu, and so we ended up making my Grandma's salmon loaf. This involves a couple of cans of salmon mixed up with eggs and breadcrumbs and whatever other veggies are on hand, and baked in ramekins until they're crispy and bubbly on top.

It was perfectly tasty, but I couldn't help thinking it could use a little bit of a twist. So when I got home I decided to try the same basic idea, with one big change.

I decided to fry it.

Here's what I started out with:

A can of tuna, an egg, panko breadcrumbs (yum), a handful of caramelized onions, some sliced up kalamata olives, salt, and pepper. I took the picture before I mixed it on purpose, since it didn't look all the glamorous afterwards.

But once it was all mixed up, I broke out the canola oil and fried them up hush puppy style.

They needed less than a minute to get all nice and crispy brown on the outside. I ate them dipped in mustard, since that's what we had on hand, but they'd probably be nice with some tartar sauce. Here's the finished product: 

So happy birthday, Grandma, and thanks for the inspiration. Although, given her confusion over my decision to saute carrots instead of boiling or steaming them, maybe it's best I keep this particular adaptation to myself.