Gluten/Wheat Free Cajun Fried Fish and Hush Puppies

  First of all, I got a fryer today! Wahoo, I am so thrilled! I know it's not the healthiest thing in the world, but now we can stop buying pre made sweet potato fries and really expensive breaded fish that even after proper baking never really have that crispy coating. I hate hate hate frying on my stove top as it is such a mess, plus never comes out right (my techinique is terrible, I am way too impatient). Now the Orange, Sweet and Sour, and General Tso's 'chicken' recipes will be so much better!
 And did I mention it was only $40!!! What the heck, all this time I thought fryers were at least $100.

  Anyway, so this is more of a review of Zatarain's Crispy Southern Fish Fri and Zatarain's Seasoned Fish Fri, the latter of which was used to make hush puppies, since we followed the recipes on the box, making substitutions for eggs and milk.

  Here's my review: IT WAS AWESOME! We used Tilapia fillets and cut them into inch wide 'fingers', then breaded them with the Crispy Southern breading and fried them. They were great, and I'm sure fried on the stove top they would have been just as good. I'd love to try it with catfish but we bought a huge bag of tilapia fillets a while ago and I want to use them up first.

 We also followed the hush puppy recipe on the side of the Seasoned Fri breading mix, which called for corn meal, milk (we used almond), 1 egg (we used EnerG egg replacer), 2 Tbs shortening (we used soy and dairy free olive oil margarine) and finely chopped shallots. They were a bit on the spicy side but not so much that anyone here complained.

 All in all, I probably would save this type of meal for once in a blue moon because it just seems wrong to each two fried things on one plate, but they were really really good and I had no idea they were wheat and rice free and could be made so well with substitutions.