Baked Catfish Pecan Meuniere with Spicy Sauteed Greens (2024)

Servin’ up catfish N’Awlins style! Baked Catfish Pecan Meuniere is my healthy interpretation of the Palace Cafeclassic. Spicy Sauteed Greens make the perfect side dish!

The inspiration behind this recipe:

Ever have one of those meals where you wake up the next morning thinking about the amazing meal you had the night before?

Yeah. This one.

Not long after my husband and I were married, we drove down to New Orleans for a long weekend. After checking into our quaint, boutique hotel that my genius husband found for half the normal price, we went for a stroll in the French Quarter. We were getting hungry after the long drive from Memphis so we decided the first place that looked interesting, we’d try and get a table.

That place happened to be the famousPalace Cafe and I thoroughly enjoyed their Catfish Pecan Meuniere, a signature dish of theirs. Every. Last. Beautiful bite.

I enjoyed this dish so much that I purchased their cookbook so I could make it at home. However, when I saw the amount of butter and cream in their recipe, I freaked a little bit and decided to come up with a healthier version. This version of their dish is one of our favorite fish dishes to make at home and it’s deliciously easy!

What is Meunière?

‘Meunière, French for “miller’s wife,” refers to both a sauce and method of preparation mainly for fish. The sauce is often just browned butter, lemon juice and chopped parsley.

For meunière as to how you would prepare fish, you would dredge the fish in seasoned flour and pan-fry, usually in butter.

The Palace Cafe dresses theirs up with pecans and it’s a lovely addition! However, I have a “thing” about frying nuts because they can go from zero to burned in very little time. So, to make it healthier and avoid burned nuts, I just bake it.

Tips for making Baked Catfish Pecan Meuniere:

• To chop the nuts, you can use a manual nut chopper or do them by hand with a knife, but a mini food processor works perfectly.
• When using a mini food processor, be sure to just finely chop the pecans. If you process them too long, you risk their becoming pasty and close to the texture of a “nut butter.”

• Farm-raised catfish is one of the few farm-raised fish I will eat as long as it’s raised in the U.S. In fact, the Monterey Bay Seafood Watch program considers domestically-farmed catfish to be a “best choice. Wild-caught catfish tastes a bit too “earthy” for my palate. Do your research and ask the fishmonger where the fish is raised.

• If you’re not a catfish fan, substitute any flaky white fish such as sole, flounder, tilapia or barramundi. If you’re allergic to fish, try this preparation with chicken.
• Coat the fish with the spicy pecan combination…

• And bake!

• Palace Cafe serves a decadent butter and cream sauce with their dish. To make my version healthier, I make a sauce using a light butter spread (such as Land O’Lakes). Light butter can’t take a lot of heat for regular cooking and doesn’t brown like regular butter, but it tastes fairly rich and melts smoothly.

My Spicy Sauteed Greens make the perfect side dish. Use Swiss chard, kale, turnip, collards or spinach. After a quick saute, I jazz them up with fresh garlic, crushed red pepper flakes and a splash of red wine vinegar.

Baked Catfish Pecan Meuniere with Spicy Sauteed Greens! Laissez lesbontemps rouler!

Thanks toSchermer Pecansfor sending me the beautiful pecans I used in this recipe!

For more super tasty fish dishes, be sure to try my:

• Pistachio-Crusted Fish with Lemon Dill Aioli
• Baked Fish with Cherry Tomato-Olive Sauce and Lemon Chive Asiago Orzo
• Curried Chickpea-Encrusted Barramundi with Jalapeno-Lime Tartar Sauce
• Blackened Halibut with Mango Avocado Salsa