Recipe: Bacon Wrapped Catfish

[ellyssian]

I made this last night; lack of teh intarwebs - as with earlier today - kept it from you for about 28 hours...

• four filets of catfish
• bacon, sliced
• 1/2 lemon

Simple, right?

Preheat oven to 425 F.

Start with the wider, thicker part of the filet and fold it in half along the spot where the spine was, internal bits to internal bits. Wrap tightly with bacon in a spiral manner, without overlapping. You'll need more than one slice of bacon per filet, unless you've got really scrawny fishies. I used 3-4, I think. Toothpicks, inserted at an angle, work splendid to help keep things together *if* - and that's a big, bold, IF - your daughter didn't recently use the toothpicks, and your wife decided to put them away in the top of the arts & crafts drawer in the school room instead of in the kitchen, above the spices, where the only people who are home at the time might expect them to be. I wouldn't know, though, as I didn't have the luxury of toothpicks available to me, and Justin, Mr. B, and I would never have thought they might be removed from the kitchen and stuffed in with pencils, pens, erasers, staplers, and felt-tip markers. Oy.

Anyway - and read this first, before attempting! - make sure that the fillets you have fit neatly in the oven and stovetop safe pan you'll be using. I used a 12" cast iron pan on account of not having anything else capable of going from stovetop to oven, and the four filets I used left no surface area available for the two or three extra slices of bacon I had. Oh, a quick word on the bacon: I think we were eating neighbors. The local shop slices it and sells them in zip lock bags, so I don't think they travelled all that far. Eat local - support your economy instead of someone else's, save resources, and piss off the current ruling regime by being American. Or Canadian. Or whereveryouhappentobeian. None of this import/export stuff wherever possible, even if it's just across state lines.

Now, although I totally created this recipe on my own and certainly didn't steal it from some random webpage, I discovered that starting the fry pan on "High heat" on the stovetop leads to the first filet blackening before the second gets there. Prep the four, and drop them in the pan. I'd go with medium high heat, because I couldn't turn them fast enough. Of course, I also had them stuffed in tight, and couldn't turn them much at all. And no toothpicks. But it still came out decent enough that it looked impressive in the end, but we're not there yet.

Oh, and another note: I can't vouch for the mushroom thing, as the 12" is the only fry pan I'll use - Deb keeps the teflon crud around, but I won't use it. I'd prefer DuPont didn't season my food for me.

Anyway, three minutes time a side is the alleged timing from the websi- I mean that I thought seemed right, but on high, it took about 30 seconds. I turned the fish until it was golden brown beautiful (or the bacon was, more accurately; except for the first two filets which were pitch black in places - but thankfully not burnededy tasting). I added the lemon juice at this point, because, well, I forgot it earlier. The pan then goes into the oven for 10 minutes a side - I think I did maybe three sides. Remember, the fish is rolled up and mostly round, at least in the places where the wrapping held together. Even without toothpicks, this was all but one or two slices of wrapping, so it stays pretty good.

I basically did two sides, and then decided the filets didn't look quite done. It wasn't overdone, so the 30 minutes timing seems to work out pretty well.

When the fish comes out, pull it out of the pan and set the filets on a board to set. When researching this, I found one recipe - repeated on every website known to man - for bacon-wrapped catfish that instructed a near-to-last step of removing the bacon. I fail to see how this evil could have proliferated, but hey, it's teh intarwebs, so go figure. I suspect, perhaps, yendi's hand in this - although if it included instructions on shipping the bacon to him, I'd have a confirmation. But... remove the bacon? defeats the purpose, don't it?

The fish should sit there about five minutes, and then slice across the roll in 1-1.5" segments. Arrange artistically on a plate along with the mushroom stuff from the monkfish recipe I linked to, if you're lucky enough to have decent pots and pans and plenty of them and planned the whole thing in advance instead of winging it last minute like I did. I used this. And served it with a salad, which had, as a side benefit of those 2-3 extra slices, fresh bacon torn up into it.

Comments

Bacon

[sikander7.livejournal.com]

I'll try that; it sounds simple and tasty.
When I was in the Middle East I used to make Moh@mmed's Revenge; dates with bacon wrapped around. Quickly fried on the outside and the date heats up a little to make a very tasty snack, ideal for parties (except that they get eaten too quickly!)

Re: Bacon

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Now that sounds like something I'll have to try! =)

[blood-of-winter.livejournal.com]

hmm..any recipe with the words "spine" or "internal bits" makes me nervous

and yay! for local food. Im thinking of joining one of those organic/local food co-ops. We also have a bunch of farms and farm stands right down the road from us. I'd like to do a garden this year, but after last year's "bunny raids", Im hesitant.

Speaking of Dupont and stuff on pans, I *had heard* that hard anodized doesnt leach anything onto the food like traditional non-stick. Dont know if thats true...Im going to look it up.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Does "lengthwise" work better? There's no spine left anymore, someone (not me) already ripped it out. The internal bits you're thinking of are long gone, the ones I'm thinking of are the part of the filet that used to face the inside, when the filet was worn by the fish.

I like cast iron. I'd do enameled cast iron.

I like stainless or anodized for boiling stuff - like spaghetti - but not so much for anything else.