I make this at home every now and then, and it is heavenly. Here’s my take on Catfish Mulate’s for two.<\/p>\n
\n
Seasoning mix<\/b>
\n(you can probably just buy a Cajun mix at your supermarket)
\n1 t salt
\n2 t cayenne pepper
\n1 t white pepper
\n1 t black pepper
\n1 t dried basil
\n1\/2 t dried thyme<\/p>\n
Stir these all together. The cayenne is pretty essential, but otherwise substitute freely with what you have.<\/p>\n
For the etouffe\u00e9<\/b><\/p>\n
1 stick butter
\n1\/4 cup chopped onion
\n1\/4 cup chopped celery (about 1 stalk)
\n1\/4 cup chopped green pepper (about half a pepper)
\n3 T flour
\n1\/3 cup flour
\n1 1\/2 cups stock (seafood stock is nice, but really, will you have that on your shelf? Chicken stock is fine.)
\n1\/2 to 1 pound little shrimp (I like the 50-60 count size)
\n1\/2 cup chopped green onion<\/p>\n
In a cast iron (or very heavy skillet) heat the oil over high heat until it starts to smoke. Stir in the flour. Hot, hot, hot! Don’t get any on you. Stir constantly until it is a dark red-brown. Remove from heat and stir in the celery, bell pepper, and onion. Stir in 1 tablespoon of the spice mix. Keep stirring until it stops sizzling. I hope you have a good exhaust fan, or a window open. This step will fill your house with throat-searing pepper smoke.<\/p>\n
In a sauce pan bring 1 cup of the stock to a boil. Gradually stir in the celery, bell pepper, and onion mix. Cook and stir for a couple minutes and then shut off the heat.<\/p>\n
In yet another pan melt 1\/2 stick of butter. Stir in the shrimp and the green onions. Stir for about a minute, then add the stock and vegetable mix, another 1\/2 stick of butter, and the final 1\/2 cup of stock. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring or shaking the pan. Taste it, depending on how spicy you like things, add more of the seasoning mix. Set aside and keep warm.<\/p>\n
For the fish<\/b><\/p>\n
2 fillets of fish. Any flat white fish will do. Catfish, tilapia, grouper are all nice and readily available around here.
\n2 T butter, melted<\/p>\n
Get a cast iron skillet nice and hot. I’d really hesitate to try this in anything other than cast iron, but if you have a good heavy skillet, go for it.<\/p>\n
Pour a little of the butter on the fish, then sprinkle liberally with the seasoning mix and rub it to evenly coat. Do both sides.<\/p>\n
Put the fish in the skillet. Have your exhaust fan cranked and your windows open.<\/p>\n
Depending on the thickness of your fish, turn after a couple of minutes. Pour the remaining melted butter on the fish.<\/p>\n
Cook until done.<\/p>\n
Putting it all together<\/b><\/p>\n
Put the fish on a plate. Divide the etouffe\u00e9 over it.<\/p>\n
Eat with rice and plenty of bread.\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Maybe heavenly is hyperbole, but when you eat this, you’ll know life is very, very good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Debbie and I went to New Orleans a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cooking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckzumbrun.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}