Stuffed Catfish

There is a local restaurant that serves fish stuffed with an eggplant and shrimp stuffing.  I have eaten it so many times that I have studied the ingredients.  I have come up with my own version of the dish, quite similar to the original one I love so much.

Ingredients:

2 eggplants

1 medium onion

1 green bell pepper

1/2 cup celery

2 tablespoons minced garlic
A splash of dry sherry (optional)

1 lb frozen shrimp, thawed

1 can cream of mushroom soup

2 cups breadcrumbs

4 lbs catfish fillets

Start by dicing the eggplants.  Finely chop the onion, celery and green bell pepper.

 

Boil the eggplant until tender.

While the eggplant is boiling, saute the onions, celery, green bell pepper, garlic, a splash of dry sherry and butter until the onions are translucent and soft.

Once the mixture has cooked down, add in the shrimp and season with cayenne pepper, black pepper, salt and pepper to taste.

Allow the shrimp to cook.  For this, I used frozen shrimp that was deveined, with tails off and already cooked.  It did not take long for it to cook down with the seasonings.

Once the eggplant is finished boiling, drain out the water.  Using a fork, smash the eggplant to make it mushy.

Toss in half of the breadcrumbs and the shrimp mixture from the skillet with the eggplant.  Mix well.

Add the can of cream of mushroom soup and mix.

Add in the remainder of the breadcrumbs and stir.  If your stuffing is too thin, you can add more breadcrumbs to soak up some of the moisture.

When done, the stuffing should look like this.

Lay out the catfish fillets in a baking dish.  These catfish fillets were quite long, so I actually cut them in half to create more of a true serving size.  Season the catfish with paprika, salt and pepper.

Spoon the stuffing on top of the catfish.  I prefer to use an ice scream scoop, it seems to scoop out just to right amount of stuffing.

Finish by adding dry parsley flakes on top of the fish and stuffing.  Bake in the oven for 45 minutes at 350 degrees.  When done baking, fish should be flaky and stuffing thoroughly cooked.