Fish is one of those things I feel like I should become more familiar with because it cooks so quickly and therefore makes for an easy, delicious meal. So one week when I was particularly bored with my usual foods, I decided to add catfish to an Arganica food delivery order. When the catfish was delivered, there were three very nice pieces of filet so I decided three meals, with the catfish cooked three different ways. The first choice was an easy one. Blackened. My favorite way to eat catfish.
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This was indeed an easy dish to make. All you have to do is mix together the spices, dredge the catfish in the spices, get a pan with oil hot, then cook on each side for two to three minutes and you're done! Next time I make this I think I'm even going to make extra spice mix so that I can jar it to make the process one step quicker (and who knows maybe I'll find some other dish that the "blackened" spices will work well with). |
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For dinner the next night I knew I could go with the other classic way of cooking catfish of grilled, but I wanted something a little more than that. As I looked around my kitchen my eyes fell upon some corn tortillas. Bingo. Fish tacos. After doing some recipe searching I discovered that catfish is not a normal fish to use for fish tacos; I think because it's not a flaky white fish. Also cabbage, of the red or white kind, seems to be a common ingredient in fish tacos. Although I didn't have any red or white cabbage, I did happen to have some napa cabbage (another item I had picked up
because I wanted something different from my norm). So as I had a white fish (albeit not flaky) and I had cabbage (albeit not white or red cabbage) I decided that this could still work and so I forged ahead. Catfish tacos with napa cabbage it was. Using this recipe as my guide, I marinated the fish in some oil, chopped up jalapenos, lime juice, cayenne, and chilli and then since I don't have a grill I pan fried the fish. I also sauteed the napa cabbage as napa cabbage raw seemed strange to me. To the taco I also added some salsa and a line of Sriracha (a.k.a. rooster sauce). Overall the dish was tasty, but could be better. The fish would have benefited from a longer, heavier marinade and the dish needed some texture. In hindsight since the cabbage is supposed to give the tacos some crunch texture I should have tried to make some sort of slaw with the napa cabbage. 
And lastly I made an oven baked version of a battered fried catfish using this recipe as a guide. I don't like to deep fry things in my kitchen as I don't have a deep fryer and I find deep frying makes such a mess with the hot oil popping out of the pan and also I never know what to do with all that oil afterwards. Seems such a waste just to throw it away. My solution always is to bake things instead. Does anyone have any other good solutions? Or any other good ways to make a catfish dish? For me the overall winner is still catfish blackened. So yummy.
| Recipe Links: | Not Lackin' on the Blackenin' Catfish |
| Fish Tacos | |
| Oven Fried Catfish |
