Blackened fish is so 1980s, I know, but I still love it. Here I use catfish, a Cajun staple, but you can blacken any fish sturdy enough for this ferocious cooking process. Blackened redfish is the classic example. Alongside the fish is Cajun succotash, called maque choux.
Cajun and Creole Recipes
Cajun Dirty Rice
Cajun or Creole dirty rice is the easiest way to start eating the giblets of the birds you bring home. The recipe gets its name from finely chopped liver that’s added to the rice, along with ground up hearts and gizzards. Basically this is Cajun fried rice. And it’s damn good.
Deep Fried Doves
Dove season opens tomorrow, and while I dearly love grilling doves, I like fried doves almost as much. Deep frying them sets a nice crust on the outside while leaving the meat pink near the bone.
Cajun Turtle Sauce Piquante
This is a Cajun classic, often done with alligator, but equally good with snapping turtle, which is what I used here. Sauce piquante is a bit of a mash-up between gumbo and an etouffee.
Cajun Boudin Sausage
Boudin, the ultimate Cajun comfort food. Not quite a sausage, boudin is more like jambalaya in a hog casing. You eat it on crackers or just by hand, right out of the casing. I learned how to make it at Legnon’s in Lafayette, and here’s my version.
Creole Turtle Soup
What do you do when a friend drop ships you a dead snapping turtle? You make Creole turtle soup, that’s what. One of the weirdest things to land on my doorstep become one of my favorite new soups…
Grilled Fish on the ‘Half Shell’
I don’t normally get excited about rockfish. They are easy to catch, and are often small. But recently in Alaska, I caught a gigantic yelloweye rockfish. I was giddy, and knew exactly what to do with it: Grilled redfish, or in this case “orange fish,” on the half shell.
Blackened Catfish with Maque Choux
Remember the blackened redfish craze back in the 1980s? I do, and I am here to revive that old dish, only this time with catfish caught in Northern California.