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Welcome to Thyme Flies, a place to find southern, and Cajun and Creole recipes as well as plain old home cooking.
It's also a place to spend a little thyme.
Louisiana is called the sportsman’s paradise.
I’m not much of a sportsman, but I remember fishing at Black Bayou with young friends Billy Williams and Ronnie Elkins.
That beautiful summer day, we caught a single catfish that we filleted and cooked on the bayou. It was more than good, it
was wonderful. Here is a recipe for blackened catfish, Hosston style. Enjoy.
Old Hosston Blackened Catfish
Ingredients:
·6 to 8 catfish fillets ·1 teaspoon black pepper ·1 teaspoon thyme ·1 teaspoon salt ·½ teaspoon garlic
powder ·½ teaspoon onion powder ·½ teaspoon paprika ·½ cup butter, melted ·lemon juice, a few drops
Rinse fillets and then pat dry with paper towels. Mix
thyme, cayenne pepper, black pepper, salt, garlic powder, onion powder and paprika in a small bowl. Brush melted butter lightly
over catfish fillets and sprinkle with blackened seasoning. Coat each fillet.
Heat iron cast skillet until it is very hot, about 10 minutes. Pour the leftover butter into your skillet. Cook fillets
in skillet for about 4 minutes on both sides. Turn the fillets when the smoke turns gray. Serve finished fillets over a bed
of white steamed rice. Add a few drops of lemon juice to each fillet.
Growing up in northwest Louisiana - not far
from Black Bayou and Caddo Lake - I saw many large garfish. I didn’t know that these prehistoric denizens of many a
southern river and lakes were edible. Today, I learned differently. My good friend and fellow geologist Mickey spent a couple of days this week in
Houston (sorry Aunt Dot. I didn’t have time to call) at the North American Prospect Expo. On the way home, before traversing
fifteen inches of snow in Dallas, we stopped for lunch at a Mexican seafood restaurant adjacent to I-45 (Hey, a great place
with the food prices reasonable, if not inexpensive - Michoacan’s) in Houston. One of the items on the appetizer menu was garfish balls. They also
had octopus tacos, which I did not try. I didn’t get the recipe for the garfish balls at the restaurant, but I found
this one on the web. Quite tasty, I might say myself! Fried Garfish Balls ·2 lbs ground garfish ·1 cup green onions – chopped ·1 lb. boiled and peeled
potatoes ·2 medium white onions – chopped ·¼ cup Zatarains
(or other Creole) seasoning ·¼ cup all- purpose flour ·corn flour
Boil potatoes; mix the first 6 ingredients
together in a bowl. Roll the mixture into balls the size of golf balls or maybe even a little bigger if you like.
Put the balls in the corn flour and roll them around to fully coat the balls. Put the balls in the
fryer preheated to 375°and fry until golden brown. Serve as appetizers or as a side with the main meal.
Many years ago, I took a field trip to Venice,
Louisiana with some fellow geology students from NLSC (now University of Louisiana, Monroe). We spent the night in an onshore
barracks and then took a crew boat out to visit a few offshore drilling rigs the following day.
After reaching
a location on a choppy sea, we had lunch on one of the rigs.Drilling crews stay on the offshore rigs for days on end, twenty-one days on, seven days off. There is
television and the game room, but little else to occupy your time while stranded miles from shore. The food often makes everything
bearable.
When my geology class visited, I was impressed (as any twenty-one-year-old man would be) at the steaks,
chicken, red beans and rice, multiple deserts, etc. available four times a day.Offshore cooks are the best in the world at keeping people happy. I found this recipe
on the web, donated byDick English,
a cook on an offshore drilling rig. Thanks Dick. Try it and enjoy. Crab Imperial Ingredients:
½ pound
of butter
1
cup of flour
2
cups of milk
½
cup of celery, chopped fine
½ cup of mushrooms, chopped fine
½ cup
of parsley, chopped fine
½ cups of green onions, chopped fine
½ cup of pimentos, chopped fine
2 pounds of
lump crab meat
Worcestershire
sauce, to taste
Tabasco
sauce, to taste
Salt
and pepper, to taste
Breadcrumbs
Cooking Instructions Melt butter over low heat and stir-in flour. Cook until bubbles appear on top.
Add milk slowly, stirring constantly. Add celery and mushrooms. Continue cooking while adding parsley, green onions and pimentos.
Fold-in crabmeat. Add Worcestershire sauce, hot pepper sauce, salt and pepper, to taste. Pour mixture into individual
baking dishes and sprinkle with breadcrumbs. Bake until brown in 350-degree oven.
I grew up eating my Mother's home cooking. I didn't know that we were poor, but we were - moneywise, that is.
We never missed a meal, and, as I look back, I now see that everyone was a culinary masterpiece. That's what we're after
here - the realization that simpler is sometimes (if not always) best.
Please check out Eric Wilder's book Murder Etouffee for the best Cajun and Creole recipes, and so much more!
