Blackened Fish

Tasty? Yes. Blackened? No.

The recipe calls for you to dredge thin fish fillets in a blend of flour and either purchased or homemade Creole spice mix, after pre-soaking in milk, and fry in smoking oil.

A few of these steps seemed odd to me: pre-soaking the fish in milk….my mother used to do it claiming it made the fish taste and smell less "fishy”, but the author offers no explanation; I’ve never seen flour used to make blackened fish. I found that it diluted the intensity of the spice blend (I used the recipe from the book) and interfered with the caramelization of the fish. I think the use of oil instead of butter also prevented good crust formation.

However, this ended up being a very kid-friendly dish “ the fish didn’t taste or smell fishy at all (so maybe my mother was right!) but was flavourful and not too spicy.