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Baked Catfish Po’ Boys 🐟🥖


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Full disclosure: I’ve never been to New Orleans and my only litmus test for a good po’ boy is Bab’s brief stint on Willy St. (where Ha Long Bay currently resides) and New Orleans’ Takeout.

Last night, however, I think I made the best catfish po’ boys this side of Lake Pontchartrain; let’s see how I did it!

Cabbage, carrot slaw with added red onion and pepperoncinis.

I started four hours before dinnertime with a 10 oz. bag of Josie’s Organics Power Mix and added red onion and pickled pepperoncinis.

Next comes about three tablespoons of mayo, some Dijon, lemon juice, white wine vinegar, minced garlic, onion powder, sweet paprika, and a little Tony Chachere’s creole seasoning.

Mayo and vinegar slaw; the best of both worlds.

Mix all this together and put it in an airtight, leakproof container because you’re going to be flipping and flopping it around to get everything good and coated. Store in the fridge until you’re ready to put the sandwiches together.

Next up, the remoulade. I didn’t take pictures because it’s simply mayo, paprika, Louisiana hot sauce, and some more Chachere’s. Mix all this together and store in the fridge until assembly time.

When you can’t stand waiting any longer for that delicious slaw, turn the oven on and get your parchment paper out! Three fillets were one-half fillet too much for our huge sandwiches, so plan accordingly. These were frozen, but it seems they take about the same amount to bake… roughly 10-12 minutes. I sprayed ’em with avocado oil and seasoned them with some more Chachere’s and placed them in a 400° oven.

Fishy, fishy, fishy, fish.

I sliced the French bread loaf and scooped out some of the dough. Who needs that to take up space when you have all this other deliciousness?

A nice French bread will do.

When there are around three minutes left on your oven timer, pop the bread in to warm up.

Now it’s all about assembly: bread, cheese, tomato, slaw, fish, remoulade, bread. And a side of mildly dirty rice.

Baked Catfish Po’ Boys

A Norwegian gal's take on a New Orleans' classic.
Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Course Main Course
Cuisine French
Servings 2

Ingredients
  

Slaw

  • 1 10 oz bag cabbage, carrot, kale slaw
  • 2 Tbsp pickled pepperoncinis diced
  • 2 Tbsp red onion diced
  • 3 Tbsp mayonnaise
  • 1 tsp Dijon mustard
  • 1 Tbsp lemon juice
  • 1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
  • 1 tsp agave nectar
  • 1 tsp granulated garlic
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • 1 tsp lemon pepper
  • 1 tsp Tony Chachere's Creole seasoning

Remoulade

  • 4 Tbsp mayonnaise
  • 1 Tbsp Louisiana hot sauce
  • 1 tsp sweet paprika
  • 1 tsp Tony Chachere's Creole seasoning
  • 1 tsp prepared horseradish

Sandwich

  • 3 catfish fillets frozen
  • 1 spray avocado oil each
  • 1 tsp Tony Chachere's Creole seasoning each
  • 1 loaf French bread cut to length and sliced, insides scooped out
  • 2 slices beefsteak tomato
  • 4 slices cheddar cheese

Instructions
 

Slaw

  • Mix everything in a bowl with a leak-proof lid. Flip every so often. Keep in fridge until ready to use.

Remoulade

  • Mix everything in a bowl. Keep in fridge until ready to use.

Fish

  • Preheat oven to 400°. Line baking sheet with parchment.
  • Put fillets on sheet and spray each with oil and sprinkle with seasoning.
  • Bake for 10-12 minutes.

Sandwiches

  • Place bread in oven for 3 minutes to toast a bit.
  • Remove from oven and place cheese slices and tomato slices, then top with coleslaw, fish, remoulade and the top piece of bread.
  • Relish in what you've created.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

Three-Ingredient* Tomato Soup 🥫


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This is a quick side, a lifesaver on a cold winter day, and we can’t be friends if you don’t have the ingredients available in your pantry (actually, I don’t care for it when folks make that exclamation, so we can still be friends, regardless).

Butter, onion, tomatoes.

That’s it, have a great day!


JUST KIDDING!

Grab your 3- or 4-quart Dutch oven (even if you’re only making a small amount, I’ll explain later) and put some butter in there over medium heat.

Slice an onion into very large pieces and sauté for five minutes or until soft.

Dump in one can of diced tomatoes for every two people who will end up with a serving. For each pair of folks, fill up one can with water, veggie, or chicken broth and pour into the vessel (*this is where the three-ingredient-claim kinda falls down, but I would contend that the recipe is great, even if it’s four ingredients).

Bring to a simmer, cover, and set a timer for 30 minutes.

Grab your immersion blender and zip it into a smooth soup. This is where using the smallest Dutch oven isn’t the best idea. Immersion-blending it in a 2-quart will result in splattered shirts and faces.

Serve with a side of grilled cheese or tuna melts.

Three-Ingredient Tomato Soup

A throw-together soup with ingredients you hopefully have.
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Course Side Dish, Soup
Cuisine American
Servings 2

Equipment

  • Dutch oven
  • Immersion blender

Ingredients
  

  • 1 Tbsp butter unsalted
  • 1/2 medium white onion sliced large
  • 1 14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes
  • 1 14.5 oz. can can-full of broth or water

Instructions
 

  • Heat Dutch oven over medium-high and add butter.
  • Place sliced onion and stir to coat.
  • Dump in the tomatoes, fill can with water (or broth of your choice) and empty into Dutch oven.
  • Cover and let simmer for 30 minutes.
  • Use immersion blender to mix to desired consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

Salade Niçoise


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This is an amalgamation of several Niçoise salad recipes and, since it requires many dishes and methods, it gets five eggplants for difficulty.

I was recently talking to the fella about rating the recipes and timing and how to get everything in the right order and how that seems to come naturally to me, so I’ll try to incorporate reasoning into the recipes that I write so it helps make sense of the whole thing.

For this dish, you can either start with the eggs or make them while the veggies are roasting. They can be hard boiled at any point prior and I use Gwennie’s method because it makes sense to me. So, for this recipe, it’s a nine-minute egg. The eggs can sit in the ice bath in a metal mixing bowl until you’re ready to plate, as far as I’m concerned. The colder they are, the easier they are to peel.

A riveting shot of eggs, resting in boiled water, covered. Use your imagination.

As the salad is served room temp, you can roast the veggies next (or first, depending on your egg situation). This will give them time to cool enough to put atop your mixed greens, which are typically fragile enough to wilt under the heat of a roasted veggie. My recently-discovered trick: after the eggs are peeled, wipe out the metal bowl, put all the veggies in and pop in the freezer for about five minutes.

I have not been diagnosed with OCD or Asperger’s but identify with those who have.

I’ve been keen on the bag of peppers from Costco since I don’t care for green (they make me burp) and the red/yellow/orange are usually over a dollar a piece at Woodman’s.

Baby potatoes cut into halves will be chewy in about 35 minutes at 400°. The peppers, thankfully, go along for this ride nicely. Spritz with avocado oil and sprinkle with salt, pepper, Herbamare, or any of your favorite seasonings and spices.

Little Ball jars are a staple in the kitchen for mixing up quick dressings.

While your eggs are cooling in the sink, you can steam the green beans using the leftover egg water. You still want the freshly crunch, which is why steaming (for about eight minutes on medium heat) is the best method here.

While waiting for the veggies, you can make the dressing and mix up the tuna. The dressing is just* olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. The tuna is a handful of parsley, capers, minced shallot, and two cans of tuna packed in oil. If you have an abundance of oil left in the can, add it to the dressing. It’s all going to the same place, so it doesn’t *really* matter, but it helps bring all the flavors closer together.

Mayo-based tuna salad is GOOD but this is waaay better.

A couple of the recipes I referenced for this specifically call for Niçoise olives (holy crap, they’re expensive on Amazon!), so if you have a patient helper, get them, otherwise, Kalamata olives will do just fine (and they’re already pitted—a huuuuuge time-saver).

Much of the assembly line.

Fill a bowl with greens (these are the organic mixed greens from Costco, but we’ve been having varying degrees of luck with them lasting more than a day past “best by”) and tomatoes. It looks like a lot of food but will scrunch down into the bowl after everything else is piled on.

The start of a very delicious dinner.

Top with the warmer veggies and dressing. This should, hopefully, get things closer in temperature. I was a bit anxious and hungry, so I may have pressed a bit on this step.

Top with tuna, olives, and a couple of crusty bread slices (as if it weren’t enough food already) and serve to your best friend(s).

Beauty in a bowl.

Niçoise Salad

A veritable mashup of crunchy, soft, savory, tasty goodness.
Prep Time 45 minutes
Cook Time 35 minutes
Cool Time 10 minutes
Course Main Course, Salad
Cuisine French
Servings 2

Ingredients
  

  • 4 eggs
  • 12 baby potatoes halved
  • 2 peppers sliced
  • 2 cups green beans
  • 2 cans tuna packed in oil
  • 2 tbsp capers
  • 2 tbsp shallot minced
  • 1 tbsp parsley chopped
  • 3 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 tbsp lemon juice
  • 12 cherry or grape tomatoes halved
  • 2 cups greens mixed
  • 2 tbsp Niçoise or Kalamata olives sliced

Instructions
 

For the eggs:

  • Place eggs in a pot and cover with cold water until an inch over (it's really hard to see what a liquid inch is when you're looking down into the pot). Turn heat on high and watch for boiling bubbles.
  • As soon as the water boils, turn off the heat, move pot to a cold burner, and set a timer for nine minutes.
  • Fill a metal bowl with ice cubes and put in the sink. When the egg timer goes off, run some cold water in the metal bowl and put the eggs in there to cool.

For the roasted veggies:

  • Preheat oven to 400°.
  • Slice potatoes into halves, slice peppers into strips, and arrange on a baking sheet (covered with parchment, if you like to make your life easier). Spray with avocado oil and sprinkle with salt, pepper, herbamare, and/or your favorite seasonings from Penzey's. Bake for 35 minutes. Remove from oven, remove veggies and parchment to another surface to cool.

For the steamed green beans:

  • Place a steamer basket into a pot of water to make sure you haven't overfilled it. Turn the heat on.
  • Break off bean ends and cut beans in half. When the water is near boiling, arrange in the steamer basket and set a timer for seven minutes, cover. Remove basket and set on counter to cool (there is a theme here).

For the dressing:

  • In the vessel of your choice, add olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper (and some dijon mustard, if you're feeling fancy). Shake, whisk, or otherwise mix together and hold for later.

For the tuna salad:

  • Empty two cans of tuna into a bowl and add capers, shallots, and parsley. Mix well with a fork.

Assembly:

  • Peel eggs, slice in half.
  • Place mixed greens in two bowls, throw in the sliced tomatoes, drizzle dressing over the greens.
  • Assemble veggies, top with tuna salad and olives. Place eggs pleasingly around the bowl edge and serve.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

I’ve had my share of mock-tuna dishes made with a slightly mashed chickpea mixture and think this would hold up well if you wanted to make it vegetarian; do this and omit the hard-boiled eggs to make it vegan.

My Take on Dressing

The sooner you learn how to make (and enjoy the simplicity of) your own dressing, the happier you’ll be. No more half-used bottles of Ranch in the back of the fridge, no more zero-calorie (and tasteless) Caesar dressing, no more salads doused with high fructose corn syrup and whey powder. *Just* oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper (also dijon mustard and agave nectar).

And, if you do want Caesar, Ranch, or whatever, you can enjoy the pure calories of buttermilk cuz you haven’t been using the bottled kind.

Easy-Peasy Cheesy-Quichey


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We’d been having migas each weekend day for breakfast for a while, so I thought we could mix it up for the long weekend (also, I had only thought to buy two poblanos instead of three).

I scoured the blueprint of the fridge in my brain to come up with suitable ingredients, wishing there was a button with which to dispense asparagus. Alas, this is not Star Trek, so I landed on a simple tomato-basil mix as the featured stars.

I whipped up a quick crust and pressed it into a Pyrex pie pan.

Don’t worry! If it looks rough, I call it ‘rustic’.

Chop up the tomatoes (these are from Costco) and sprinkle with basil (I threw in some Italian seasoning, too) and salt. Right about now is when I would remember that I should have turned the oven on to 400°.

Tomatoes and basil smell so good.

Place the tomatoes on the crust and crack four eggs into the bowl (don’t bother rinsing it out, it’s all going to end up in the same place) and whisk with a fork or, the fella’s favorite, a French whisk.

Pretty little tomatoes.
Eggs and cheese.

Mix the shredded Asiago into the eggs and pour over the tomatoes in the pie pan. Top with a few sliced tomatoes to make it look nice.

It even looks good raw!
Into the oven.

Throw it in the oven for 30 minutes. When the timer beeps, grab a wooden toothpick and poke it into the middle of the egg. If it comes out clean(ish), it’s done enough to take out (it will keep cooking a little while it rests). Leave it on the counter for five minutes and then slice and serve!

Easy, cheesy, quichey.

Mary Berry would have been proud that there was no soggy bottom, but I didn’t press it into the pan evenly enough, so it was thicker in the corners. It will come out and taste just as well without the crust if you want to skip that part. That would qualify this as a one-eggplant recipe, then.

Tomato-Basil-Asiago Quiche

This is a quick, throw-together for breakfast or lunch. It takes mere minutes to prepare and you can use any compatible ingredients that you have hanging out in the fridge.
Prep Time 25 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Rest Time 5 minutes
Course Breakfast
Cuisine American
Servings 2

Ingredients
  

Quick Crust

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1/4 cup ice water

Yummy Quiche

  • 1 1/2 cups tomatoes cherry or grape, sliced
  • 2 tsp basil dried or chopped
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 4 eggs beaten
  • 1/2 cup Asiago cheese shredded

Instructions
 

For the crust:

  • Mix dry ingredients in a small bowl.
  • Whisk together oil and water to thicken a bit and pour into dry ingredients.
  • Mix with a fork until well combined, use your fingers to spread the crust into an ungreased 9" pie plate.

For the quiche:

  • Preheat oven to 400°.
  • Clean out the bowl from making the crust and put the chopped tomatoes in there. Mix well with basil and salt. Spread them as evenly as you can over the crust.
  • Beat the eggs in the same bowl. When sufficiently mixed up, add the cheese and pour gently over the tomatoes and crust. Top with some halved tomatoes for looks.
  • Bake for 30 minutes. Test the middle with a wooden toothpick, and if it comes out mostly clean, it's ready. Let rest for about 5 minutes, slice and serve.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

Baked Orzo with Mozz


I started this blog with the intention of sharing recipes that I really like from cookbooks that I have but there are rules about sharing methods since they belong to the author of said recipe.

You can find the ingredients and instructions on a bunch of other people’s sites or in Yotam Ottolenghi’s book Plenty More.

I’ll share with you my experience and pictures and hope that you want to make this yourself.

THIS DISH IS AMAZING, relatively easy, and pretty.

Firstly, Ottolenghi doesn’t tell you to salt the diced eggplant and I have the secret as to why. Female eggplants have more seeds, so the fruit is more bitter (more seeds means a higher likelihood of creating more fruit babies). Salting it draws out the bitterness but it also makes it squishy. If you learn how to select the right eggplant, you can save yourself time and have a tastier dish. It’s also fun to stand in the produce section looking at the bottom of each eggplant while others gaze on, wondering what the heck you’re doing.

The eggplant takes about eight minutes to cook up, use this time to dice the carrots and celery.

Not bitter, male eggplant.

Take the eggplant out of the pan and swap in the celery and carrots.

Did I mention that my new pan is amazing?

Gold carrots and celery.

In a little bit, you’ll look at the list of ingredients and, if you’re anything like me, you’ll say, “Who uses ONE teaspoon of tomato paste?!”

Here’s a trick I employ when tomato paste is involved since I have never come across a recipe that uses an entire 6 oz. can.

Freeze it!

Get yourself some silicone trays and fill ’em up! Pop them in the freezer and, when you remember, put them in a freezer baggie for the next time you need one more teaspoon.

After the broth and paste are mixed in with the onion, garlic, veggies, and orzo, stir in the cheeses. The recipe calls for cubed mozzarella to be placed throughout the mixture, but we’ve found that this doesn’t distribute well, so we recommend shredding the cheese and mixing it in.

Fill up your favorite casserole dish and top with the sliced tomatoes.

Pre-bake.
Post-bake.

The end result was so delicious that I only remembered to grab a picture of my second helping.

For the full recipe, use The Googles, or buy/borrow/lease Ottolenghi’s book Plenty More.