Catfish with potatoes in the oven in a cast-iron pan
This is a dish in three layers, and each of them does its own job. At the bottom are the potatoes — they take the heat of the pan and catch the juices running down from the fish. In the middle are the catfish steaks. On top is onion in mayonnaise: it covers the fish and keeps it from drying out over forty minutes in the oven.
The order cannot be changed. Potatoes under the fish cook in the fat and the juices and come out soft; the same potatoes on top would dry out, because nothing drips onto them. Onion at the bottom would burn and give nothing back — it is needed precisely as a covering.
Mayonnaise can be swapped for sour cream one for one, and it changes the taste less than you would think: in the oven both work the same way, as a film of fat. Take sour cream of 20 % or more, otherwise it will curdle. The same catfish in sour cream, but without potatoes and cut thicker, is catfish steaks with sour cream — that one takes an hour at 190 °C.
The same catfish is cut into steaks under sour cream in catfish steaks in the oven with sour cream, and gains mushrooms in catfish baked in sour cream with mushrooms.
Caloric content: 195kcal
Break down the catfish and marinate it
Slice the potatoes
Season the potatoes
Cut the onion
Grease the pan
Lay the potatoes in
Lay the fish on
Mix the onion with the mayonnaise
Cover it with the onion
Bake for 40 minutes
Notes
- Pat the potatoes dry with paper towels after slicing them. Water on the surface of the slices turns to steam in the oven, and the bottom layer will start to boil instead of baking.
- A cast-iron pan is better here than a baking tray. It holds the heat evenly from below, and the bottom is the thickest and densest part of this dish.
- Mix the onion with the leftover mayonnaise. Dry onion on top will simply burn over forty minutes; in mayonnaise it braises in its own juices and stays soft.
- Forty minutes is for steaks two fingers thick. Catfish is dense, and a thicker piece needs longer; check it at the bone.
- Two kilos of catfish is not much for this fish. A catfish you catch is often a good deal bigger, and the rest usually goes into the freezer; thawed fish works for this recipe too.
- A tablespoon of salt for two kilos is not a mistake. It is shared between the fish, the potatoes and the onion — three layers, not poured into one.
Recipe and step-by-step photos — kolizhanka.net.ua.
