A fried fish tale

I went down to Carolyn's Sunday morning to sit with Jax while the rest of the family went to church. He was very cooperative...asleep when I got there and stayed asleep the entire time. I did look in on him a couple of times to make sure he was okay.

I stayed for a little while as Carolyn started lunch, then headed home to make lunch for Wayne and I. When I was at the seafood market at the grocery store a few days ago, I saw basa fillets. The tag said they were similar to catfish (which I am not partial to,) but they looked very much like trout...long and narrow, unlike the tilapia that I usually buy which is wide and short. They were also about half the price of tilapia. So, I bought three fillets along with a product called Louisiana Fish Fry Products - New Orleans Style Fish Fry. (You didn't notice, but I was gone about an hour. When I went downstairs to see what the product was called, I got distracted doing other things...included among those things was trying to remember why I had gone downstairs.)

Anyway, you just dip the fish in ice water, shake it off and then roll it in the fish fry stuff. I didn't even season the fish. Then I fried it and served it along with potatoes with onions, black-eye peas (frozen, not the dried ones) and cornbread. Pretty good meal, I thought. I had mentioned to Wayne that I was using this new--to me--fish fry coating, so after we ate I asked how he like the fish. Mainly I was asking about the fish, not the coating, as we had never had basa before. He said he liked the coating to be crisper........................BRRRRRRGHT (insert sound of buzzer here..........wrong answer! I commented that mine was crispy. (And his was, too) He said that he liked a thicker coating. I didn't make any other comments, but my mind was working like crazy. Crispy, to him, is cooked to death...hard. For instance, proper fried okra for him would be crisp throughout, any resemblance to okra would be accidental.

I rarely fry anything anymore. In fact, I had gotten to where I baked fish more often than I fried it. I know when something isn't good, although I don't think that happens too often. You would think that after more than 44 years of eating my cooking, he would have learned what the correct response to my original question would be...."It's really good! You know I like fried fish!"

I don't know what he was thinking...but, he'll be damned lucky to get anything fried around here for awhile!