dinner last night

my apologies in advance to our vegetarian friends...

we had a fabulous dinner last night! Even the kids had seconds, DH had thirds!! Seeing as how we are gluten-free and most everything we eat is made from scratch and all recipes must be adapted (those experiments are not always met with such enthusiasm), this gave me great joy and I have to share it with you all.

We had cornbread-battered deep-fried catfish nuggets and tossed salad. Such a simple dinner. I peeked inside Bittman's How to Cook Everything cookbook, but his batter did not call for eggs, and I knew milk alone wouldn't give me the southern-style crunchy batter I wanted. So I made it up instead. I took one egg, and twice that volume of milk (since we can't do beer anymore), beat it up well with a fork and set the fish in it to soak while the oil heated up. We still had some peanut oil from last Thanksgiving's fried turkey, so I used that rather than the olive oil I always cook with. Then, in a separate bowl I just mixed some cornmeal (we have never had a gluten-like reaction from Martha White Plain Cornmeal, even though it says on the label that it may be cross-contaminated with wheat) with some salt and pepper. Dipped the egg/milk soaked pieces of fish in the cornmeal and quickly fried until it was a lovely shade of golden brown. You gotta make sure the oil is almost hot enough to smoke (Bittman's cookbook says 375 degrees, but I couldn't find my thermometer), too cool and the batter falls off, too hot and your house is full of smoke. Do not overcook! YUMMMY!