Cornmeal jalapeño cheese balls

Cornmeal is sold in packages, this is a handful of popcorn milled to powder in a coffee  mill. 

However much corn powder is there, today 1/4 measured cup, X3 that much water or other liquid like chicken broth. Cooked in the microwave in 45 second pulses, removed and stirred. It congeals and cooks weirdly from the bottom up and will thicken completely while the top remains liquid, so it must be stirred twice, certainly at least once to avoid lumping. It will cook to creamy texture if stirred, and it goes very fast, all within two or a few minutes. To boil and that is all. The cornmeal is cooked and cooled before the other things added.

Basically a hushpuppy with jalapeño and cheese. If it were cornmeal only then the thick batter could be dropped into hot oil directly but because it has cheese, and a lot of it, then it must be provided a coating so that melted cheese does not leak into the oil. It makes a huge mess of the oil when it does. 

Anything wet interior and crusty exterior will not stay crusty for long. Within very short time the internal moisture gets to the surface and softens it. So they must be served and consumed quickly, no hanging around. One way to slow that is make the interior more dry and serve the balls with sauce. 

Tuna in masa with cranberry sauce

Catfish,hushpuppies

These catfish pieces were in the freezer for-eh-ver. They had ice crystals stuck all over 'em. They looked bad, real bad, real real bad, I'm tellin'n ya, they were so bad even my cat looked at me with a  clear expression of  disgust. I don't even own a cat, it showed up just to show disgust.

So I can't believe how good they turned out. This gives me hope for the future of ice-frosty fish.

* A/P flour into a bowl

* equal amount of corn meal into the same bowl

* S/P/cayenne into the bowl

* 1 egg into another bowl

* equal amount of milk with the egg.

* mix

* dredge

* drench

* re-dredge

Hot oil 350℉ / 175℃ until a light golden brown. More of a dark golden rod brown. No wait, a sienna brown. No, wait, wait, wait, a saddle brown, that's it, a saddle brown. Definitely a saddle brown. Maybe a cocoa brown. Okay, forget about the color, just cook 'em 'til they're done.

Catfish hushpupies

Made with real cats! Catfish, that is. 

When we first moved to the South (she shall r-i-i-i-i-i-s-e again) my dad hooked up with the Shreveport Masons. Maybe it was Bossier City masons. The only Masonic lodge I've ever seen made of wood. Go figure. They hosted a catfish and hushpuppy dinner. It was fun. My introduction to both catfish and to hushpuppies, and it was love at first sight. Incidentally, to get there we had to pass vast fields of cotton, and that was fascinating too. It was like popcorn on scraggly sticks.

No recipe here, I just threw my favorite things into a bowl. I used 1/4 of a large onion because that's all I had left. Three scrawny limp stalks of celery, the end of a large package of three or four whole things of celery bushes or whatever they're called. One orange bell pepper. That was the most of the vegetables. I added adobe chile powder, and the last of a package of Vindaloo curry. I have a whole 'nuther jar but that was the last of the little bag. S/P and one egg. I used masa herena which made it smell all Mexicany and fantastic, not a normal ingredient, corn meal, and flour for adhesion, plus a little baking powder to lighten the mixture. Should have used more of that. They could have been more moist too. I still have some of this mixture left so I might fix it. That's all.

Hot vegetable oil for no more than a few minutes.

Sriracha sauce is the red stuff in the little bowl, and weeeee doggie, it that stuff hot. I should have mixed it with catsup but I was too lazy.