popcorn fish

This isn't about tiny little deep fried fish as found at Red Lobster. Thankfully.

For some reason I got it into my head that popcorn would make an interesting ingredient, not just a tasty snack. It might have been the two large bags of gourmet popcorn sitting in my cabinets. In any case, I did some Googling for recipes with popcorn as an ingredient. There aren't very many, and in fact the only recipe I found was one found here, for a popcorn-breaded fried fish fillet.

It's a trivially easy recipe. Pop some popcorn (I like to use my wok for this, as the results are good and it helps to season the wok!). Throw a cup of the popped corn in the food processor until it's pretty fine. Dip fillets of fish in a mixture of egg and milk (I used soy), then coat with the ground popcorn. Add some salt and pepper, and saute on medium-high heat in butter and oil. The recipe calls for catfish; I used tilapia, but suspect the catfish would have been better.
I also slightly undercooked the fish, despite the recipe being trivially easy.... This said, the thinner parts of the fillet were excellent. The popcorn adds a light crunch and corn flavor without the heaviness of a cornmeal breading. The color effects of the white popped corn and the (since I used purple popcorn) dark corn skin were also interesting.
I also made some good steamed/sauteed beets and beet greens, thanks to the CSA and Deborah Madison. And the leftover popcorn, seasoned with seasoned salt, was pretty tasty too...