Catfish Cakes

I really like crab cakes. But crab meat is expensive. Solution: catfish cakes! These taste so close to the real thing, and they weren't even that hard to make (for some reason I had built up crab cakes in my head to be a labor-intesive and difficult food)!

Recipe adapted from here.

Ingredients:
1 pound catfish filets (I used the frozen kind - three big filets!)
1 small onion, chopped
1 teaspoon prepared yellow mustard (I used spicy brown mustard)
1 tablespoon creamy salad dressing (I used Mayo w/ olive oil)
1 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning
1/2 teaspoon lemon pepper (I'm not sure how much of this I really used... I just dumped it in there)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder (again, not sure exactly how much I used)
Salt and pepper to taste
2 1/2 cups coarsely crushed buttery round crackers (I used Club crackers)
1 egg
1 cup vegetable oil (for frying)

Directions:
1. Boil catfish in water for about 5 minutes, or until the fish flakes easily with a fork. Drain the fish, and mash it up with a fork. (You could also bake the fish and then mash it)
2. Stir the onion, mustard, seasonings, crushed crackers, and salad dressing into the mashed fish.
3. Add the egg and mix until evenly blended.
4. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Form the fish mixture into patties.
5. Take each patty and dip both sides in flour. Then, put into the oil. Fry on each side, and drain on paper towels.

Now for the explanatory photographs:

I think I left my catfish boiling a little too long. It flaked with a fork WAY too easily when I tried to get it out of the water!

Here's my catfish post-fork-mashing.

Chopped onions! (anyone else's eye's get watery just looking at this? Oh, classical conditioning.)

The best way to crush crackers is to stick them in a freezer-duty bag and then hit it with your fists until you're feeling totally stress-free!

Here's the mixture with everything added in...

Dipping the patties in flour...

Mmmm, fried food! If you're like me and you haven't fried anything in a while, you should make this recipe. I so enjoyed the sizzling on the stove!

Ta-da!

We ate them just by themselves with green beans, but some sort of tartar sauce would be yummy with them!

Enjoy!!