Dear Friends,
Another weekend has come to a close, and I had the most perfect Saturday of 2018 so far! I spent the entire day with friends, craft beer and Mexican food. It was also the opening day of the Farmer’s Market and I stocked up on some amazing food! Kale, radishes, green onions, asparagus, sweet potatoes and some farm fresh eggs. I promptly came home and made myself a sweet potato stuffed with sautéed kale, green onion and radish, and had some leftover tuna salad on wheat crackers alongside it.
The farmer’s market really put me in the mood for some fresh summer cooking, and with the beautiful warm weekend, complete with pink shoulders, summer is proving to be right around the corner. Cinco de Mayo also put me in the mood for tacos! I had a Chicken Chimichanga Saturday night…one of my go-to dishes. But I love fish tacos, especially made with fried catfish!
I live in Southeast Missouri, in a town that sits alongside the Mississippi. My grandpa found a man who catches pounds upon pounds of catfish and sells them from his home-based market in the middle of nowhere. He always buys a ton of 2lb packages at a time and gives us a couple of them. By far our favorite way to eat them is in a taco!
Ingredients:
- 1 lb fresh catfish nuggets (the fish I get is already packaged this way, but you can just cut up filets into chunks)
- 4-6 whole wheat tortillas – mine are 10″ so I cut them down to about 8″
- shredded cheese, as much as you like
- shredded cabbage
- 6 TBS ranch dressing
- a few healthy dashes of Mrs. Dash Southwest Chipotle seasoning
- a cup or two of almond milk for dipping
- Wheat flour and cornmeal mixture for coating
- salt and pepper to taste
- vegetable oil for frying
Prepare:
- I always start by spreading out the fish on a plate or in a shallow bowl
- I then mix my cornmeal and wheat flour to make the coating. I don’t have exact measurements, I just use equal parts of each to fill a bowl. I add plenty of salt, pepper, and even some garlic powder
- Pour almond milk into a separate bowl, then line the bowls up in an assembly line…fish, milk, breading
- I fill the bottom of a frying pan with 1/2″ – 1″ of oil and let it get hot.
- Dip the fish into the almond milk, then into the breading mix, and then into the hot oil. Cooking hack – I use my left hand for the milk and my right hand for the breading mix to keep from getting a gooey batter all over my fingers!
- Fry the fish over medium heat until the breading is golden brown, and place on a paper towel-covered plate to drain
- Meanwhile, warm the whole wheat tortillas in the microwave for around 30 seconds, then lay them out on the serving plates
- Put a bed of cabbage on the tortilla first (I used lettuce this time because I had a ton of it needing to be used)
- Lay a few pieces of catfish on top of the cabbage, and sprinkle with some shredded cheese
- In a small bowl, mix the ranch dressing and the chipotle seasoning mix to make a chipotle ranch sauce. You can also add a little sour cream into this and it makes it even better…I do this occasionally, but since I’m already putting cheese on the tacos and I like to limit my dairy, I don’t do it often.
- Drizzle the chipotle ranch on top, secure the tacos with a toothpick if you wish, and serve!
My kiddos go wild for these tacos, even my picky one! We have them about every couple of months and never get tired of them. Usually I will just toss a salad to serve along with them so we get our greens in, too. But this time I had some potatoes that were needing used and my chives are going crazy outside, so I diced and boiled some potatoes, tossed in some salt, minced garlic and fresh-chopped chives, and had garlic and chives potatoes for the side.
Happy eating!
Love,
Loren
beetitudes.com 