I want to try and re-create this delicious creamy white sauce I tasted last time I went to Jose Tejas in New Jersey. It was the Cajun Catfish, which was a spicey, pan seared, fillet of catfish on the side of black beans and rice, topped with this delicious creamy sauce on top.
I can handle the catfish and the beans and rice, but I don’t know how to even begin on the sauce. Anyone have any ideas that might help me out? And not necessarily to re-create the original, but maybe you have a recipe for a mild, creamy sauce that would go well on this dish?
There’s a fairly basic, really simple sort of universal fish/shellfish sauce.(and it’s not bad on chicken or veal either)
Melt some butter in a pan medium-lowish, and add some minced garlic until the garlic mellows
Before the garlic starts to burn add some white wine and let it simmer down for a couple minutes.
Add about as much cream as you did wine, and simmer a bit more.
Squeeze in a bit of lemon juice or lemon zest, and salt and pepper till it tastes perfect.
**Wolfman, ** thanks from one of the sauce-impaired of the Teemings. I made some pesto last night, so I’ll finish it off with a spoon of that instead of lemon. Now that salmon fillet will never know what hit it!
wolfman’s recipe looks good, but the fact that it’s Cajun makes me think it could be a roux-based sauce, like a bechamel.
Basic bechamel:
Melt a quantity of butter in a saucepan over medium-low heat. When foaming begins to subside, slowly add, while whisking, an amount of flour equal to the butter. Whisk until smooth, and continue whisking over medium-low heat while the flour cooks. This is called “roux.”
Meanwhile, put milk (no fat-free; between 2% and whole, please) in a heatproof delivery vessel (like a glass measuring cup with a spout) and put in microwave on low for a couple of minutes. You want the milk warm or better, anywhere up to to just-barely-steaming, but be very careful not to let it boil.
As you continue whisking the roux, you’ll start to get a lovely nutty smell when it’s approaching readiness. You can continue with the next step once you get the aroma, or you can continue cooking the roux and darken the flour to golden before proceeding; the tastes are different and you should experiment to see what you like.
Whisk in the heated milk, slowly, in batches. Note that the mixture will thin out with each addition of milk, and then will thicken up over the heat as you whisk. Continue whisking until you have at minimum quadrupled the volume of the roux before the milk was added.
Now add salt and pepper to taste, along with a slight dusting of freshly-ground nutmeg. Continue whisking until seasoning is well incorporated, then add a final splash of milk, whisk in, and add to plate when very hot.
(Sample proportions to produce about two cups of sauce, which will be plenty for six people: three tablespoons butter, three tablespoons flour, two cups milk, one and a half teaspoons salt, quarter teaspoon pepper, quarter teaspoon nutmeg. These are not set in stone; they’re just guidelines. Everybody has his or her own general preference as to seasoning and thickness/texture.)
That’s your basic, classic bechamel. Goes great on fish, among other things.
Now, to twist it up:
You can make a cheese sauce by adding some grated semi-hard cheese after the milk, and whisking until melted. Add in batches and taste as you go. You don’t want to use a soft melting cheese like mozzarella or fontina, as it’ll make the sauce stringy. Parmesan works nicely, if you use the good stuff (NOT the green can) and grate it very fine. Me, I’m partial to myzithra.
You can add aromatics to the base roux. For example, while melting the butter, add a clove or two of finely minced garlic, and cook until soft, before adding the flour. You want the garlic soft and sweetened, but not sauteed; if it starts getting golden-brown, your heat is too high. Likewise, you might also add a thumb-sized quantity of very finely minced sweet onion.
You don’t have to use butter; any tasty oil will do. Northern Italian lasagna replaces the ricotta layer with a bechamel in which the flour is cooked in olive oil instead of butter.
You can flavor the bechamel with herbs and other spices. For a whitefish, for example, add some minced chervil about halfway through the milk step. Or you could add paprika or a dash of cayenne, which is what I would expect in a Cajun type fish sauce.
Just don’t do too much; pick one of the twists and keep it simple. This is a delicately mild sauce, a delivery system for creaminess and seasoning, so if you overload it too much (garlic AND cayenne AND cheese), it’ll get busy and distracting. You want it to support the fish you’re serving it with, not steal the spotlight.
If you want to go creamy creole and tasty- I would go with this delicious sounding Creole Choron sauce with either Crabmeat, Crawfish, or Shrimp included on top of the blackened catfish.
A hollandaise would work as well, I would think. It’s not “creamy” in the sense of having a lot of cream, but I could see someone describe it as such for its richness.
