Super Belated Dinner Diva… This was a would be road food on our menu 2 times, but both times replaced eating on the go with a sit down meal… Once I finally made it I still didn’t get around to posting it, but can I say I LOVED this! We made it with a cold rotisserie chicken ($3.33, I think, since they’d pulled it from the heat lamps and chilled it… so really not worth the effort to roast your own anymore at that price, so we bought 3 and froze two in gallon ziplocs for future laziness…) which made it so blooming easy… But it really wouldn’t have been much harder to cook the chicken if you were making a smaller batch, we just didn’t want to have to cook meat in two batches so this was a perfect fix as everything go done at once and really in very little time… plus leftovers for later, so win-win… minimum effort, maximum food… Very Yummy, we all really enjoyed this… (and the base was even a cooking light recipe, so maybe I should try more of their stuff… as this was actually tasty…)

the orginal recipe

Mandarin Orange Chicken Salad Wraps **
meat pulled from 1 rotisserie chicken (minus skin)
4 tsp Watkin’s garlic-ginger grapeseed oil (bought from one of Hub’s friend’s to support her efforts, easy enough to infuse your own though)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cayenne
2 (11 oz) cans mandarin oranges in juice (reserve 1/4 c juice when draining)
1/2 c green onion
1/4 c chive
2 tsp minced garlic
1 c chicken broth
2 T tamari (or dark soy sauce)
2 T cornstarch
1 head of cabbage, shredded
8 oz bean sprouts
8 lg flour tortillas

Warm chicken, oil, s/p, 1 can oranges, 1/4 c juice/syrup from oranges, onions, chives and garlic over med heat. Combine broth, tamari, and cornstarch; add to pan. Bring to a boil; simmer until thickened. Add other can of drained oranges (after this is when I took half out). Add cabbage and sprouts and toss well to coat/dress them then just wrap up in the tortillas…

** I only assembled half of this so I pulled half the meat mixture off to the side to cool for packing away, and only used half the cabbage, sprouts and tortillas…

So Dinner Divas had this as a recipe idea… and well there are no rules, right? so I just made my own catfish po boy without relying on this recipe… which I guess still counts as it is the same idea…

I mean I had a recipe in the Moosewood (Simple Suppers I think) that I’d wanted to try so I figured I’d make that, but then I couldn’t find the cookbook so I’m making something up (if I get stuck I’ll just channel dead relatives, I can’t tell you how much fried catfish goes on in my family surely I’ve learned a thing or two from osmosis)… “Fish, fried fish at that, on a weeknight?” some of you might be wondering what made me so brave all of a sudden… but I’ll confess, the truth is we have a meeting at the bluejay’s school this afternoon so hubby planned to just take off and so he could be on hand for backup/rescue…

taken after frying... I should have taken another in sandwich form but I didnt...

Catfish Po’ Boys
4 7-oz catfish fillets
1 c flour
buttermilk
1 T ea: garlic pwd, onion pwd
2 tsp ea: salt and blk pepper
1 tsp hot pepper sauce (typical red one)
cornmeal

Season the fish, dip in batter and dredge in cornmeal… Drop fish into deep oil at 375, fry until golden and floating…

Served on 4 Hoagie Rolls with cole slaw (1/2 a head worth, plus grated carrots dressed w/o the dreaded mayo) and Rémoulade for me and the Hubs… pretty good stuff. But I couldn’t fry the fish, and only one turned out nice (seen to the right)… the process was minorly exasperating so I forgot to take more pictures… [JP: Yes, I used the cole slaw and on the rémoulade on the sandwich not the side... I'd wanted to use cheese too but was too exhausted to slice some, and just wanted to eat...]