My daughter Nora loves the thin-fried catfish at Middendorf’s, on Bayou Manchac. We haven’t been in a year or so. Today, we took a field trip there. It took a while to get in — it’s a big place, but they’re social-distancing, so there’s a wait — but Lord have mercy, was it ever worth it!

Take a look at this:

UPDATE: Presenting Mark B.’s Netherlandic clafoutis, which I promised to post ages ago, but it kept slipping my mind!

Here is the recipe from Mark, who lives in Holland:

CLAFOUTIS

Ingredients

3 medium sized eggs

100 gram white or powdered sugar

8 gram vanilla-sugar (one little package usually)

200 gram whole milk

200 gram whipped cream (I said double cream before but I am not sure what that is now. In Dutch it is called ‘slagroom’ which translates in English as whipped cream. It has a fat percentage of 35%. One does not whip the cream here of course).

one vanilla stick (if that is not possible, 2 tablespoons of vanilla-extract will do as well.

50 grams of basic white wheat flower

180 grams  of prunes in glass (drained weight)

280 grams of of cherries in glass (drained weight)

about 50 grams of almond flakes

1/4 teaspoon of salt

Take a glass cake pan (glass works better than metal here in my experience) with diameter about 24 cm/9,44 inch and rub the inside with butter (unsalted!). Then drain the prunes and cherries and dip them dry with kitchen paper gently. Distribute them evenly over the bottom of the cake pan.

Put in a bowl the eggs, sugar, vanilla sugar, flower, milk, whipped cream, vanilla essence from the vanilla stick or extract, salt and mix it to a smooth batter/baking mix.

Pour the batter gently over the prunes and cherries, filling the cake pan. Then sprinkle the almond flakes over the surface till it is completely covered with flakes. Put it in a pre-heated oven that is 180 degrees Celsius / 356 Fahrenheit and bake it between 30-40 minutes. The clafoutis is ready when the edge has risen up and has browned and the middle is not liquid anymore on the surface.

Enjoy!