Return of More Shocking Dip

Homemade chili barbecue sauce is what I had in a glass jar with a metal lid, in the fridge.

A labor of love. I made it last week by cooking, after cleaning, a few different varieties of dried Southwestern-style chilies from cherry-sized to big, and onion, a trace of tomato in the form of ketchup; garlic and oregano and vinegar and mustard, with molasses. (The vinegar included some homemade vinegar I made from homemade Chilean red grape wine, which I made specifically from leftover grapes to make vinegar from.) I strained the sauce through a strainer after I pulverized it in the blender after cooking.

So that's what I dipped the tilapia in before breading it in half self-rising flour, half cornbread mix. With black pepper and some salt. And fried them golden brown in canola oil in the iron skillet.

On the side to fill the tacos with is a mix of fine slivered iceberg lettuce with an equal amount of fine slivered cabbage. With red vinegar and lime juice squirted on it, lightly salted right before adding it to the fresh Mr. Stripey tomato picked a few hours ago, washed, chopped lightly, and lightly salted. And a pile of similar sized avocado chunks, with salt and lime juice. And the chopped jalapeño.

More Shocking Dip

For some frozen boneless tilapia fillets I made a standard sort of breading: half cornbread mix and half self-rising flour, augmented with salt, pepper, and some onion powder, and a healthy teaspoon of cayenne pepper.

Where I broke ranks with tradition is the dip I concocted to wet each fillet prior to applying the breading. I put 3 TBS. of yellow mustard, 2 TBS. of brown mustard, and a splash of beer - Sierra Nevada brand - into a bowl and whisked it up. It was a tad runny so I adjusted it with some sprinkles of the breading mix, whisking, until it was thick enough but not a "batter" by any means. Dipped, then breaded the fillets.

I heated an inch of canola oil in my cast iron dutch oven I use for a fryer, and fried the fillets to light brown perfection. Served with a squirt of lime juice on each. (On the side I had some sweet potato I skinned, baked in the microwave, and then thick sliced and browned each side in a skillet with butter. Also some baked beans from a can. What the heck.)

The fish is one of the best things I have had in a long, long time. Highly recommended.

Shocking Dip Part 2 - Szechuan Sauce for Breading Chicken

Last night, continuing this train of thought, I dipped some chicken in Szechuan sauce before I applied my mix of pankoesque crumbs with flour, salt, pepper and a tad of cornbread mix. I used a different brand than Kame, because I can't find it around. A good Szechuan sauce is fermented all together, in my opinion. It has soy and hot red pepper flakes or powders, and also other flavorings such as plum, garlic, ginger, sesame. I'm no expert on how to make these sauces; all I know is the brand Kame sold a few years ago was really good. I think they changed the recipe; it was not available for a few years and then all of a sudden I saw it again. Just not lately. So I used Asian Gourmet brand Szechuan stir fry sauce.

This made very tasty fried chicken. It almost browned too fast but I turned down the heat, and kept flipping it in the pan, and let it finish on low. I may never dip chicken in egg dip again.

Pankoesque Breading, Shocking Dip

Imagine this spaghetti-sauce-covered slice of eggplant flipped over, coated on the other side, and then fried.

Making eggplant Parmesan again, I decided to alter my recipe in two ways. First, since everybody is raving about the superiority of panko bread crumbs, I decided to push some saltines through my kitchen screen which has a lot bigger holes than my regular sieves. Easy enough if you have the larger sieve, which I do.

I am becoming convinced a modern versatile kitchen needs several sizes of sieves. I have already used mine to sort nutmeats for various recipes. If the nut pieces don't go through, they need a bit more breakage.

My normal breading for eggplant is a mixture of flour, a bit of cornbread mix, and cracker crumbs, plus a lot of garlic powder and salt, pepper, and thyme or oregano. The panko-sized crumbs were a new thing and I liked the looks of it. I usually pushed my crackers through my fine standard sieve, which does make a tasty breading with good texture. Most people actually achieve roughly the same fine texture by rolling their crackers with a rolling pin. Still, the panko people had me wondering. So along with the other ingredients, I mixed the coarser sized cracker crumbs.

The other new thing was a technique I saw on Diners Drive-ins and Dives. Somebody breaded fried chicken by first dipping it in, instead of a milk and egg dip or similar, a dip of barbecue sauce! Then they dipped it in the breading. My jaw dropped open! I never thought to do that! So today's dip was into the same spaghetti sauce I am going to use to assemble my eggplant Parmesan.

I dipped every piece of eggplant slice into that spaghetti sauce and then into the breading mix. I fried them in hot Canola oil.

The results were excellent. I am having to fight the urge to eat them all before I assemble the final dish. The tomato sauce did not cause the eggplant to blacken or anything, and the spice of the sauce is built in to the final product.

Sure, there will be more sauce added later. But I saved a step, by not having to mess with eggs and milk. I had spaghetti sauce to handle anyway. And the taste is better than my former method. I think I will try this with squash, maybe okra, and who knows what.

My eggplant Parmesan is a layer of elbow macaroni (yeah, how cheap can I go?) then the layer of sliced fried eggplant, then some sauted yellow tomato slices, a bunch of grated Parm, then the store-bought spaghetti sauce. About 10 minutes before it's done I'll toss on some more grated Parm. I figured about 25 to 45 minutes at 325° F. total time in the oven. 48 minutes did it.

UPDATE: A friend has told me her grandmother used plain yellow mustard to make the crumbs stick to her fried fish, notably catfish! Boy howdy!