Dina's Creole Table

How many of you love a great fish fry?  (I’m raising both my hands and feet on this one!) When I lived in south Louisiana, I used to host Friday night fish fries with fried catfish fillets, homemade potato salad, green peas, crawfish pasta and French bread.   My friends and family enjoyed ourselves to the point of gluttony.     In preparing my fish, I preferred to use packaged fish fry mixes vs cornmeal.   In my opinion, cornmeal was too heavy and too grainy to my taste and the cornmeal often fell off during the cooking process.   The package fish fry mixes are much lighter because they are composed of both corn flour and a little cornmeal.     My paternal grandmother Lu(cille) prepared fried fish with the Zatarain’s Fish Fri mix.   When I got my first apartment home, I began using both the Louisiana Brand Fish Fry and Zatarain’s Fish Fri mixes (depending upon which brand was on sale).   Both mixes are usually available at most grocery stores, even those here in Dallas

If you’re unfamiliar with either brand, there’s a good chance that you probably don’t know anyone from Louisiana or you have never visited Louisiana. Tony Chachere’s and Zatarain’s are both Louisiana brands that feature a wide selection of Creole seasonings and dry products such a gumbo file` (ground dried sassafras leaves), beans, dirty rice mix, jambalaya mix, etc.   Those dry mix products tend to be a cook’s time saver because they eliminate the need for extra seasonings to a dish that may only need meat to prepare the dish. Many Louisiana cooks create their own special seasoning blend for daily cooking or use Tony Chachere’s or Zatarain’s Creole seasonings instead.   If you are unfamiliar with the Creole seasoning blend, it contains salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper and other dried seasonings.   Imagine tasting Old Bay Seasoning, but it has a little more salt and more of a spicy kick to it. Growing up, I was exposed to both seasoning blends.   My paternal grand