Fried Catfish Strips

A Syracuse, NY favorite, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que has a menu that will have you drooling all over yourself  before you even get to the entrees. I could happily make a meal of the appetizers and sides alone. Their Cuban-style black beans and rice are absolutely sublime, there is no other word for it, and the cucumber and tomato salad adds that note of freshness that rounds out whatever big heavy hunk o' smoked meat you may have on your plate.

If I were to make a meal of the appetizers, I'd have to start with their Fried Green Tomatoes, really the best use for green tomatoes that I know of. The contrast of the crispy cornmeal coating and the still-firm and green tomato are as perfect a combination as malt vinegar and salt are for fries. Every time I bite into one, I get that zing at the back and sides of my throat. Love that.

Next up would be the drunken spicy shrimp boil, which features one of my favorite spice mixtures, Old Bay. You could put Old Bay on just about anything and I'd probably eat it. Well, except for offal. I doubt anything could dress up tongue or kidneys so that I'd find them appetizing.

Finally, my favorite app, catfish strips. I would gladly eat these every day. True story, I'd never had catfish before my fist visit to Dinosaur. I guess that the pre-seasoned catfish fillets I saw in the market never looked appealing to me. Well shame on me. Catfish is wonderful, especially soaked in buttermilk, crusted with cornmeal and fried.

This is not, as far as I know, the exact recipe they use at Dinosaur*, but it is pretty easy and yields delicious, crispy and nicely seasoned catfish strips, perfect for a snack, a sandwich or a meal.

Fried Catfish Strips

Ingredients:

• ½ lb. fillet of catfish, cut into 4 strips
• 1 - 1½ cups buttermilk
• ½ cup cornmeal
• 1¼ cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon Old Bay
• peanut oil for frying

Directions:

1. Put the catfish strips in a plastic container with a lid and pour in enough buttermilk to completely cover them. Cover securely and put in the fridge to marinate for 2 hours.
2. Once the fish has finished marinating, mix together the cornmeal, flour and Old Bay in a shallow dish or pie plate. Take the fish out of the buttermilk and dredge in the cornmeal mixture until thoroughly covered. repeat with all catfish strips and set aside on a plate.
3. Heat a 1/4 inch of oil in a skillet. When the oil starts to shimmer, carefully place each piece of fish into the oil and cook until light golden brown, about 4  - 5 minutes, then flip until the other side is also a nice light golden brown. Turn again and let the fish cook on each side another few minutes, letting the crust develop a deeper golden brown color. Whether or not the fish is cooked through depends on how thick the pieces are. Don't be afraid to cut into it to check if you aren't sure. The fish interior should flake with a fork and have lost its translucence. All told, my fish cooked for about 12 minutes total.
4. Take out and let rest on a plate lined with paper towels to absorb some of the extra grease, then serve with your favorite tartar sauce. I like a simple mix of mayonnaise, sriracha and Old Bay.

Notes:

• You can check out their recipes and stories of how the restaurant came to be here in the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que Cookbook.

Tweet

Peasant Breakfast

Crisis Brownies and other comfort foods is the title of the blog. Yesterday I brought you the crisis brownies - so named because sometimes when you have a crisis, the only solution is chocolate - today I'll bring you one of my favorite comfort foods; but first, a comment.

Sometimes, I derive comfort from making something elegant or fancy, like crèmes brûlées:

Other times, I'll be comforted by taking something simple and homey and presenting it attractively, like kimchi bokeum bap:

But then there are those dishes which are neither fancy nor plated professionally. I have been known to eat Stovetop Mac and Cheese straight off a wooden spoon from the saucepan as I stand in the kitchen.

This next dish is never plated attractively, does not use an elaborate recipe or expensive ingredients. There is no real name for it, and I've called it many things: Potatoes, Eggs and Vegetables, Mess-in-a-Bowl, but most often, I call it Peasant Breakfast.

It is just chunks of potato cooked in butter with vegetables, usually onion, bell pepper and mushroom, and once they've cooked down and browned nicely, I crack some eggs over it, let them set, and then mix it all together. Top it with a little grated cheese and serve. Presto. Yum. Really, for pure comfort bang for your buck, you just can't beat it.

When I was in Korea, I used to make this dish for my friends after a long night of partying in I-Tae-Won. We'd go back to my place, usually at 3 in the morning, and I'd make a huge mess of this in the name of hangover remedies, then we'd crash, sleep late and go out for kong namul guk (spicy bean sprout soup) or budae jjigae ("troop" stew) as additional help with staving off the hangover.

I also craved this dish throughout all of my pregnancies, and still crave it at times when I am cold and need something deeply warming. I made it last night as a mini-celebratory meal. I like to adjust with slightly different ingredients and spicing it differently.

Yesterday, I found hedgehog mushrooms:

They were almost too cute to eat. But I ate them, and yes, I washed them first. :)

Peasant Breakfast

Ingredients

• butter
• potatoes
• onion
• green bell pepper
• mushroom
• Creole seasoning
• Old Bay seasoning
• eggs
• grated romano
• salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Brown potatoes in butter. You can use leftover boiled potatoes if you have them, though I usually just use fresh. If you use uncooked mushrooms, you'll want to cover it and let them steam. Season with Creole seasoning.
   
2. Add the chopped onions, bell pepper and mushrooms and stir well. Add Old Bay or more Creole seasoning to suit your taste.
   
3. Cover and let cook through until the potatoes are tender and the vegetables browned. I like it when the onions get almost crispy.
   
4. Push the vegetables aside to make three holes, and crack an egg into each. Cover and let cook until the eggs are set, then stir the whole mess together and let cook. Dump into bowls and top with a bit of cheese and season with salt and pepper.
   

Notes:

• I change up the seasoning, sometimes using fresh thyme and rosemary, but I usually go for something spicy, and this does it for me. 
• I also will add in bits of leftover ham or sausage if I have them. I really like linguiça and chouriço in the spicy version or maple sausage in the rosemary and thyme version.

Tweet

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Last weekend, in preparation for Hallowe'en, my girls and I carved pumpkins basically all day long on Saturday. We each picked out a fairly elaborate pattern to carve out, and my ambitious plans to bake pumpkin bread, a pumpkin pie, a loaf of multigrain bread and roast the seeds came to naught.

We got the pumpkins done, but were all pretty sick of anything pumpkin-related, especially by the time I had finished picking out the seeds from the gigantic bowl of pumpkin guts. I washed them and let them sit in a colander, oh, all week until today when I finally said, "Hmm, I really ought to roast those suckers."

I did, and despite the 5-day wait, they were just as delicious as they always have been.

I will be making a pie at some point this weekend. ;-)

Spiced Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Ingredients:

• pumpkin seeds, unshelled
  
• olive oil
• salt
• Old Bay
  

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400.


2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.


3. Put the pumpkin seeds in a large bowl and drizzle with olive oil.


4. Add salt liberally and toss with some Old Bay.


5. Spread out into an even layer on the baking sheet and bake in the oven for 15 minutes.


6. Take them out and stir them around, flipping them over, then put them back in for another 5 minutes.
   


7. Check to see how they're doing, you don't want them burned, but if they're not roasted enough, they won't have the right amount of crunch to them.


8. When they're done, put them in a bowl and snack away.
   

Tweet

Baked Haddock with Crumb Topping

This is another dish I've tried out to broaden the kids' palate. Great success. They absolutely loved it.

I served it with Rainbow Fries (roasted root vegetables cut into fat matchsticks - 2 beets, 1 parsnip and a sweet potato sprinkled with olive oil and Old Bay) accompanied by a dipping sauce (mayo, whole grain mustard and a few splashes of Frank's RedHot Pepper Sauce), kale ribbons sauteed in olive oil and garlic, and a rice and quinoa pilaf which the girls absolutely inhaled.

My 10 year-old, who does not usually like rice, said as she dished out her 4th serving, "This is damn-good rice, Mommy."

So there ya go.

Baked Haddock wth Crumb Topping

• 3 haddock fillets
• mayonnaise
• Old Bay seasoning
• shredded pecorino romano
• panko bread crumbs
• cooking spray

1. Spray a large baking dish with cooking spray.
2. Place haddock filets, skin side down on the dish.
   
3. Spread the fish with 1-2 tablespoons of mayo, depending on how large your filet is. You don't want huge oozing gobs of mayo, you want a thin layer for the crumbs to adhere to.
4. Sprinkle some Old Bay and pecorino romano on the mayo.
5. Top with a generous coating of panko, pressing down firmly.
6. Spray with cooking spray.
7. Bake in a preheated 400-degree oven for 20 minutes or until the fish flakes nicely with a fork.
   

Tweet