Another Cooking Challenge

[firecapt186]

Seems I get challenged more in cooking than hunting, which I'm up for a challenge in either case.
I was asked to cook my catfish Atchafalaya dish, fried catfish with etoufee' on top, for the HS Band Banquet, for tomorrow night, a while back for 150 people. They wanted me to cater the whole thing, main dish, cole slaw, toasted garlic bread and a desert, my version of bananna pudding and serve it. I sat down and figured up my recipes and then adjusted them accordingly. Had it all planned out and ready to go buy every thing Tuesday morning and then I get a text from the band director, "new head count, it's going to be 250 people now" I tried to get him to just change the menu to jambalaya, but he advised me that the reason that they had such a large turnout was for the catfish dish.
SO, now I had to go back and readjust the ingredients again and here it is;

125 lbs of catfish
55lbs of crawfish tails
110 cans of cream of mushroom soup
20 cans of cream of celery
1 gal shrimp stock
48 cans of rotel tomatoes
25 lbs of butter
24lbs of onions
15lbs of celery
6-8 lbs of bellpeppers
2 qrt's of minced garlic
15 lbs of cream cheese
30 lbs of rice
30 lbs of fish fry
20 gal's of cooking oil
130 po-boy buns
11 gals of vanilla pudding
11 cans of condensed milk
11 tubs of cool whip
24 lbs banannas
10 lbs of vanilla wafer cookies
7 gal's of pre-made cole slaw, it was cheaper than making it myself

Several family members and a friend will be there to help cook and serve it.

[TallTexan]

Can I show up?

[ground level]

Now that's going to be one heck of a great feed!

[Cajun Blake]

that's a lot of killer groceries

$750 alone in crawfish tails

[cas077]

I would cut the crawfish tails in half, it make the price go way down plus no one would ever know.

[firecapt186]

Here's a few pictures of yesterdays event.





Yours truly stirring the pot of etoufee'

[firecapt186]

This is what a 20 gallon pot of etoufee' looks like. Don't worry, it's was my first time to see it too. I had never taken on such a taste as this.


My wife and 2 of our daughters making hte bananna pudding

[firecapt186]

Serving it up

[firecapt186]

A few pictures of the crowd.

[Wanderingchef]

looks great. how was your yield? did you have any left over?

[firecapt186]

Being this was the first time that I had ever attempted to try something like this, yes I had plenty left. I only used about 2/3 of the ingredients of everything, except the pudding and we had about a gallon bag left. I cut all the filets to the same length and counted out enough, plus 15, and I still have about 40lbs of fish in an ice chest. I only used about 40lbs of the crawfish tails, and had plenty in the etoufee'.

[Cajun Blake]

looks awesome

where did you find the tails ?

current rates for LA tails are $12 - 14 pound

chinese tails are selling for $5 / lb. and they are very mealy and small . I can definitely taste the difference and only support the local fishermen / product

[firecapt186]

looks awesome

where did you find the tails ?

current rates for LA tails are $12 - 14 pound

chinese tails are selling for $5 / lb. and they are very mealy and small . I can definitely taste the difference and only support the local fishermen / product

These were the Chinese. Bought them at Piggly Wiggly for 6.99. If I was cooking one for a small group, I'd bought the La. tails. The fish that I used is the Basa, it's a Vietnamise catfish that sales for 2.50 lb. for filets, most resturants use it for catfish.