Supper Club, Southern Style

Ed and I have a group of friends that gathers at someone's apartment every now and then for what we call a supper club. The host picks a theme and cooks a main dish, and everyone else contributes an appetizer, side dish, dessert, or beverage that fits the theme. At least, that's the idea. In reality, we've only met once this year. The supper club was the brainchild of our friend Maggie, and she hosted the first one (Mexican night) and has been keen to get a second one up and running for months. So Ed and I volunteered and had everyone over this past Saturday. Or almost everyone; turns out it's impossible to pick a weekend that works for everyone during the summer. Since Ed is from Texas and I lived Tennessee for a while, we decided to do a southern theme and make fried catfish, and I added a few appetizers to the line-up since no one was going to bring any. Turns out that all southern food is either a) fried, or b) heavily reliant on mayonnaise. There was hardly an item on our menu that didn't involve one or the other, and Ed has already started strategizing about coating the catfish in mayonnaise before frying next time. It's a good thing we exercise a lot.

Collard green dip (with a small, vegetarian version to the left). I served it with optional hot sauce for extra kick.

Appetizers
Southern Living was a great source for southern appetizer ideas, and all three I made turned out wonderfully. Here's how we started the evening:

• Sweet Potato and Smoky Sausage Bites with Lemon-Garlic Aioli (recipe) - These turned out great, though there was tons of the dipping sauce left over afterward. If you made it, I'd recommend halving the dip (or doubling the sweet potato and sausage skewers.)
• Deviled Eggs (I used one of Paula Deen's many recipes)
• Warm Collard Green and Bacon Dip (The recipe actually called for turnip greens but I couldn't find them. Turned out great, but made a lot.)

Fried Catfish
Ed was the mastermind on this one. The first batch he tried to make while we were testing recipes wasn't very crispy and the breading was a bit more floury than I like. So the second time we tried breading the fish in a 2:1 mixture of flour and cornmeal instead of a 4:1 mix like most recipes recommend. Ed mixed some Old Bay into the flour for an extra kick. We also let the oil get a lot hotter before adding the fish on the second go-round, which resulted in golden goodness. Of course great catfish needs great tartar sauce, so I used the recipe from my great grandfather's restaurant: mayo, Worcestershire, lemon juice, garlic powder, and chopped dill pickles. I'm not sure what the proportions are - I just keep dumping stuff in and tasting until it seems right - but if you try it I can advise that you should add as many pickles as possible, and that if you find you've added more garlic powder than mayonnaise, you've done something wrong.


I'm happy to report that everything turned out great! Maybe a little too great... Everyone ate so many of my appetizers that there was hardly any room left for the actual dinner part of it, and Ed and I have about six pounds of fish left over, with at least three cups of tartar sauce to go with it. Good thing it's tasty...