I'm no master chef & I kind of discovered this by accident, but it ended up quite good. Had a bunch of peppers & tomatoes getting old in the fridge and a bag of crappie fillets in the freezer ... didn't want to fry them, thought about making a gumbo, but decided on a fish stew after picking a recipe off the internet. So my point is, pick a fish stew recipe you like and substitute crappie fillets for all the seafood elements you'd otherwise use and modify it to taste ... and use a slow-cooker, :). Here goes, cooking is not an exact science with me & I don't necessarily follow measurments or ingredient lists, so think of it more or less of a guideline, eh?:
Ingredients
- 1 cup chopped onions
- 1 cup chopped celery ...**I actually used a 12oz bag of mirepoix-style (onions, carrots, celery) blend frozen veggies, there's a soup-blend mix and another mix with okra in it I'm gonna' try.
- 5 cloves of minced garlic
- portions of (4) semi-fresh bell peppers from the fridge (so probably 1 1/2 cup or so total), one red, one yellow, one orange, one green, chopped and chunked.
- 1 28oz can diced tomatoes ...**I used a 14.5oz can and a couple semi-fresh tomatoes from the fridge.
- 1 8oz bottle clam juice ... **did not use, I've put it in gumbos & I'm sure it would work great in this too, just didn't have any and wasn't in the mood to shop.
- 1 6oz can tomatoe paste
- 1/2 cup dry white wine or water ... **just poured in what looked like half a cup of red wine from the fridge.
- 1 Tbs red wine vinegar ... **did not have, so since I already substituted red wine for white wine, I used apple cider vinegar and figured the combination of red wine & vinegar would suffice, follow me? I also probably used more then 1 Tbs.
- 1 Tbs olive oil or vegetable oil ... **did not use, I had some, just didn't see the point.
- 2 1/2 tsp dried italian seasoning ... **wasn't sure what they were calling for here, so I used that italian seasoning you get to make your own dressing & sometimes mix in with ground beef, but I also added a little oregano & basil just to be sure.
- 1/4 tsp sugar ... **used brown sugar, and probably more like 1 tsp.
- 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes ... **oh come on, at this point I'm starting to feel my pantry/cooking supplies are woefully inadequate to follow any recipe. Substituted a half-teaspoon or so of good ol'-fashioned cayenne pepper for this one.
- 1 bay leaf
- 1lb cod, cut into 1" pieces ... **I used a pretty good sized bag of crappie fillets & did not cut them, but instead just let mixing them into the stew break them up. It worked pretty good, some big chunks, some flaking, et...
- the recipe calls for 3/4lb medium shrimp, (1) 6 1/2oz can of chopped clams, (1) 6oz can of crabmeat and 1/4 cup chopped, fresh parsley ... none of which I used. The whole point of this exercise was to substitue the crappie fillets for any seafood ingredient called for in the recipe and make it more of a 'fish' stew than a 'seafood' stew. Didn't use the parsley either, figured it was just for decoration.
How to make it
- In 5 to 6 quart slow cooker, (**I was using a 3qt or so), combine the first 13 ingredients (from onions down to bay leaf ); mix well.
- Cover; cook on High setting for 4 hours.
- Stir crappie fillets into stew. Reduce heat to Low; cover and cook an additional 30 to 45 minutes or until fish flakes easily with fork.
- Just before serving, remove and discard bay leaf. Stir in parsley.
So there you have it, easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy, basically just take a slow-cooker fish/seafood stew recipe, substitute crappie fillets for the fish/seafood ingredients & modify it to fit whatever you have around the kitchen ... it really worked well for me. I really like slow-cooking because I can put the ingredients in the pot and even take off fishing for a few hours, :biggrin .
Enjoy.
