fish cakes

Anonymous' comment down there ↓ on the fish and chips post got me craving some catfish and hushpuppies myself. Then I thought, "why must they be separate?" I did this sort of thing before with tuna fish and with salmon from a can.

I have no corn meal, but I do have popcorn. I also had the remnant of a small package of polenta. Same thing. So I used it. It wasn't enough so I milled some popcorn. The coffee grinder kept stopping, which is weird. Also the kernels look desiccated, and many of them are black. This is so freak'n weird. I never had popcorn turn like that -- get so hard it stops the coffee grinder. Eh, I picked out the black ones and the rest milled easily enough. I just didn't want to drag out that thing for such a small amount. Now I have to clean it.

As usual, I did this completely drawkcab, I mean backward. It went like this:
Egg into a bowl. Two short celery stalks diced and into the bowl. 1/4 a large purple onion diced and into the bowl. Remnant polenta powder, about 2 tablespoons into the bowl. More milled popcorn, about 2 tablespoons. Whole wheat flour into the bowl, two tablespoons. I'm not mixing anything, just adding things into a bowl.

Salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, habanero powder (tiny amount) 3/4 teaspoon baking powder.

I don't have buttermilk which counts for an acid and so as an acid throws off the balance that is baking powder (baking soda + a powdered acid), therefore, since I intend to add lime, rice vinegar, or some other acid in lieu of buttermilk, to retain the balance that will lighten the fish cakes, I added 3/4 teaspoon baking soda. At the last minute I switched to cider vinegar

So baking soda.

Then the pice of diced up catifish.

Then vinegar.

Then, finally mixed it all up. See how strange that approach? The catfish chunks are all coated with the mostly dry ingredients I tossed into the bowl. The egg on the bottom is finally getting mixed. I can see I don't have enough dry ingredients so I add more ground corn and now white flour by the tablespoon (I switched to white flour because I didn't want the cakes to be heavy with wheat bran.) I added back and forth until I was satisfied the fish pieces were sufficiently coated to form cakes.

At this point I considered dicing up some shrimp, or some other seafood and mix it in there too, but I dropped that idea.

I added milk incrementally directly from the carton. The vinegar already mixed in will sour the milk to the equivalent of buttermilk and react with the baking soda, so these cakes have three forms of leavening: egg, baking powder (acid +alkali) plus baking soda reacting with the vinegar. The egg is heat-activated, the baking powder is both heat-activated and immediate, (it's considered double-action). The baking soda and vinegar reacts immediately.

Mixed with my hands so I could feel with my fingertips how much milk to continue adding then formed into patties. This mixture turned one large catfish filet into six hamburger size patties. Served with my own aioli, they're delicious.

Update: I forgot to mention, I fried a few slices of bacon, diced and added it along with the grease for increased unpardonable decadence.