COOL

There’s some pretty COOL legislation coming up soon in the U.S. Senate, and it involves catfish.

Ever wonder where the fish you eat in restaurants comes from?

Not necessarily from the safe environments of the USA!

But, if the COOL (Country of Origin Labeling) amendment to the Farm Bill passes, you’ll know! Just like fish and seafood at the grocery store, restaurants would be required to identify where their catfish is raised. That could be as simple as adding the name of the country to the menu.

Makes sense to me! We know where our cars are made, where our clothes are stitched and where our kids’ toys are put together, so why not something as important as the food we eat?

There was a recent scare in the catfish industry when products banned for use in U.S. agriculture were found in some imported fish. Then came the trouble with imported pet food, toys and other products.

Now it seems that while 70 percent of catfish is sold in restaurants, one-third of the catfish eaten in America is imported from overseas, particularly China.

So, COOL would give consumers extra protection in the marketplace, and a bunch of newspapers are supporting it with editorials.

In Alabama, The Gadsden Times states: “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has noted problems of contamination in Asian imports before, but still inspections are far too limited to eliminate the possibility of contaminated fish making its way to U.S. restaurants.”

The Decatur Daily says that imports were hurting the catfish industry in Alabama “…while threatening the health of the people who never knew they were eating questionable imports.”

Other editorial pages — Dallas Morning News and The Orlando Sentinel.

Now, that's way cool!

Blog Event! Sustainable Seafood

October is National Seafood Month, and JacquelineC over at Leather District Gourmet is sponsoring a sustainable seafood blog event.

All right...SOUNDS GREAT, but “What is sustainable seafood?” she asks.

It’s raising fish in healthy environments and harvesting them with the least amount of harm to the fish and their habitats. It’s processing them with the least amount of waste and educating consumers to make a difference through their buying practices.

Until I checked Jacqueline’s links, I didn’t realize how many groups there are keeping tabs on fish! Several sites list the best and worst seafood choices, and I am pleased that U.S. farmed catfish (while not from the oceans) is listed in the best- choice category.

At Seafood Choices Alliance, catfish is cited as getting “high marks from conservation groups for its reputation as a sustainably farmed fish.” That’s because it is produced in freshwater ponds and according to USDA, EPA and FDA standards.

So, I have submitted a tasty Sweet & Spicy Glazed Catfish recipe to her blog event.

SWEET AND SPICY GLAZED u.s. farm-raised CATFISH

4 U.S. farm-raised catfish fillets (about 6 ounces each)
1 teaspoon salt, divided
1 teaspoon pepper, divided
3 tablespoons orange marmalade
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1/4 teaspoon minced fresh garlic
1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
Lemon and orange wedges

Preheat broiler or grill. Rinse catfish and pat dry. Season both sides of each fillet with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. In a small bowl combine marmalade, lemon juice, paprika, rind, garlic, ground red pepper and remaining salt and pepper. Brush about 1 tablespoon of mixture onto top of each fillet. To broil, on a rack sprayed with cooking spray, arrange fish fillets. Or place on grill over medium heat. Cook 6 inches from heat source until cooked through, 8 to 10 minutes. Makes: 4 servings.

Photo & recipe compliments of TCI

Back-to-Back Catfish

How 'bout that Todd's Taste of the Town!

For the second week in a row, catfish was featured in the restaurant segment on ESPN's College Game Day.

Tonight, sports analyst Todd Blackledge ate Catfish Acadiana at Walk-On's Restaurant near Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, La. Last week, he had fried catfish at The Catfish Hole in Fayetteville, Ark. So I guess you could say that catfish is a favorite dish of the Southeastern Conference! The TV commentators remarked about the back-to-back catfish segments, adding that fish is good for you!

This Cajun recipe used catfish fillets topped with crawfish etouffee and served over a bed of rice. Yum! Yum!

I guess y'all can tell I'm a college football fan! Yes, I'm still up watching the exciting fourth quarter of the Auburn vs. LSU football game.

Catfish Wins in Southern Living Cook-Off

October is a busy month for festivals, fairs and food cook-offs down South, and no bake-off is more prestigious than the Southern Living Cook-Off where catfish once again has proved itself popular.

Tuscan Catfish with Sun-dried Tomato Aioli recently won the Quick Weeknight Favorites category, and its creator took home a $10,000 prize. You can check out the recipe here on the Southern Living Magazine website. The dish will be featured in the January 2008 issue of the magazine and appear in the 2007 Southern Living Annual Recipes Cookbook.

Not only was a catfish recipe a category winner, the cook is not from traditional Catfish Country. Michael Cohen came all the way to Birmingham from Los Angeles, Calif., to prepare his dish in the contest finals. Catfish isn’t just a southern food anymore!

Catfish also found its way to ESPN this past weekend. Did you watch the Auburn vs. Arkansas football game on TV? Former Penn State/Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback-turned-sports analyst Todd Blackledge visited The Catfish Hole restaurant in Fayetteville, Ark., for his weekly Taste of the Town segment. He had their all-you-can-eat catfish fillets and hushpuppies, and he was impressed. I found a newspaper review of the featured restaurant here.

Have a great week!

Holiday Cooking - Blogger Style!

Sweet Potato-Raisin Coffee Can Cake is a Thanksgiving tradition for our family, and it’s so tasty that it won second place at the Central Alabama Fair a few years ago.

While I claimed the prize, I can't claim the recipe. It came from my mother-in-law, who was one of the great, old-fashioned cooks of the South! I'm not sure where she got her recipe, but I noticed a similar cake (or bread) in the Oct/Nov Taste of Home magazine.

I first tried this cinnamon-seasoned delight on an autumn trip to the North Georgia mountains more than two decades ago. Mama G baked two cakes in coffee cans, wrapped the slices tightly in foil, and we snacked all the way to Dahlonega. Naturally, I HAD to have this recipe as well as a bunch of others she spoiled us with!

Now, you are probably wondering where the catfish went! Well, since this is part of Overwhelmed with Joy's Holiday Cooking, Blogger Style swap, I figured I would share a dessert that nobody has yet to turn down, and oh my goodness, it goes fine with fish!

Sweet Potato-Raisin Coffee Can Cake

1½ cups sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
⅓ cup water
1 ¾ cups plain flour
1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon (I double this amount.)
1 teaspoon soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup cooked, mashed sweet potatoes
½ cup chopped nuts (I prefer walnuts.)
½ cup raisins

Combine sugar, oil, eggs, water. Beat at medium speed. Combine next five ingredients. Add to egg mixture, mixing just until moistened. Stir in potatoes, nuts and raisins. Pour into two greased and floured coffee cans. Cans should be about half full. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

NOTE: Small loaf pans work if you don’t have coffee cans. I often double this recipe and purchase four small foil pans and give these cakes as Christmas gifts. The cake is also good without the raisins and nuts. My children liked it better plain, so I filled one can with plain batter and the other with nuts ‘n raisins batter.

I mentioned Taste of Home’s sweet potato bread recipe. It is almost exactly like this one, except it adds more spices: nutmeg, allspice and cloves as well as 6 tablespoons of orange juice. The recipe is baked as one big cake in a larger loaf pan, also at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Enjoy!

Cajun Country Catfish

Cajun and southern country cooking are so intertwined that sometimes they just go together like live oak trees and Spanish moss.

Greensboro is oh so fortunate to have a few folks of Cajun Country descent who grew up with a ladle in one hand and spices in the other. Add a tad of creativity, and you have the ingredients for prize-winning cooks!

Roland Perry is one of them.

While his name doesn’t sound one bit French, he’s got the brogue to go with his background…raised on Cow Island, Louisiana, where he learned to cook beneath live oak trees on the intracoastal canal somewhere between Lake Charles and Lafayette.

His claim to fame in Alabama is chief recipe creator for a cooking team that won the Alabama Wildlife Federation’s Wild Game Cookoff several years ago. And yes, that recipe contained catfish!

Well now, farm-raised catfish isn’t wild, but all of Roland’s recipes adapt to this sweeter, healthier variety. The winning recipe was a mixture of flavors: catfish filets stuffed with crabmeat and topped with crawfish etouffee. He says this dish is written in his head, and here goes:

Split several 5-ounce catfish filets, and score them on the inside. Mix fresh or canned crabmeat with minced onion, cayenne pepper, garlic and butter (to keep it moist).

Roland recommends creativity here. Just add the ingredients according to your taste.

Fill the filets with the crabmeat mixture.(It doesn’t take much.) Grill, and top with crawfish etouffee.

Crawfish Etouffee (A-2-fay)

1 lb. crawfish tail meat
¼ lb. margarine
2 medium yellow onions, chopped
1 teaspoon red cayenne pepper
1 small bell pepper, chopped
1 teaspoon garlic
1 10-ounce can golden mushroom soup
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1 teaspoon salt

Use a black, iron cook pot or Dutch oven. Sauté the pepper, salt, onions and bell pepper in the margarine until onions are clear or wilted. Stir in the peeled crawfish meat. Lower the heat, and stir the mixture so it does not stick to the pot. Add garlic, and heat at least 15 minutes, then add the mushroom soup and green onions, and turn off the heat. Cover tightly and allow to simmer about 10 minutes. Serve the etouffee over the catfish.

Roland, who retires this week from his job as district conservationist for the Natural Resources and Conservation Service, will likely be doing even more cooking in his “ free time” ahead. He already has a reputation around town as a great cook. He’s cooked for dove hunt crowds of 75, helped start the crawfish festival in Faunsdale, cooked at Greensboro’s catfish festival and written a Camphouse Kitchen column for Gulf Coast Outdoors magazine.

In his column, he encouraged creative cooking. “Creativity is seeing what everybody else sees, only seeing it in a different way. Everybody can be creative,” he wrote.

“Creative” to Roland meant trying all kinds of cuisine as well as cooking methods. On summer Sundays, his family would gather with friends for an outdoor fish fry. They used a black iron pot that sat on a tripod over hot coals, and he gathered firewood for cooking and Spanish Moss for a fish bed. The moss was placed next to the frying pot, and when the fish was done, it was placed on the moss where it absorbed the cooking oil from the fish, a method that he says works better than today’s paper towels. While hog lard was used back then, today he recommends peanut oil.

“Catfish was the big thing down there,” he said, so he felt right at home when he moved to the “other Catfish Country” around Greensboro, and he says he's here to stay!

The Catfish Diaries

Catfish Country has gone big-time COUNTRY!

A diary about life at Newbern’s Prairie View Farm is featured in the October/November issue of Country Magazine. Some of you farm girls or country girls-at-heart might subscribe to it…or perhaps to its sister publications: Country Woman, Reminisce, Birds & Blooms and Taste of Home.

Jean Watson, the catfish farm girl whose photos are featured in Where Eagles Fly, shares events for the week beginning July 22. She writes about life in Newbern and the ups and downs of farming 200 acres of catfish ponds. She did the photographs as well, and they are wonderful depictions of typical farm tasks such as harvesting fish and working on paddlewheels.

She just happened to be writing the diary during the middle of this year’s extreme drought, so she describes how paddlewheels must keep turning to stir extra oxygen into the water. If oxygen gets too low, fish can get sick, and sometimes whole ponds of them can be lost. Then, there’s the day that the well for their house and shop ran dry!

She also mentions food safety, an issue that has been in the news concerning some imported foreign products, including catfish. She assures readers that domestic catfish production is closely monitored by our government, meaning we don‘t have to worry about banned medications, carcinogens or other pollutants in U.S. fish. Whatever goes into the pond is USDA, EPA or FDA approved. Prior to harvest, samples of the fish are tested by the processor, and that prevents us from having to swig a quart of sweet tea to drown out off flavor!

While the Watsons have a farm manager and two other employees these days, they started their farm without any extra help…just themselves and their two sons. If the fish needed oxygen during the night, the whole family pitched in to save the crop.

Jean and her husband, Byron, say that producing catfish is a “dream come true.” Their boys are grown now, but Jean told me that coming home to the farm “is like heaven to them. They can come home and all their cares go away.”

Photo: The low water level on the drain pipe in this Prairie View Farm pond shows the severity of this year's drought.