Quarantine Cooking: Fish Tacos Night

Last night I needed to cook fish (Alaskan cod fillets) I bought the day before, using the method of battering and frying that I learned while making stuffed squash blossoms on a previous night. Rather than chop ingredients midway through a recipe, I've learned to cut everything beforehand. I took out a small head of white cabbage I bought that day from the produce market and a small red onion from out garden and started slicing and dicing.

I also poured myself a glass of Mexican beer, which I would need for my fish batter.

Everything in place for my DIY fish taco bar: chopped cabbage, pickled jalapenos and carrots, street corn tortillas, sour cream, guacamole, chopped red onion, chopped cilantro, lime....mixed some of the ingredients to make a lime crema.

Next I whisked a half cup of beer with half cup of flour in order to batter half a pound of white fish.

I discovered this batter while cooking stuffed zucchini blossoms; you can substitute sparkling water for beer which makes for an even lighter and crispier batter. I started with using my fingers to dip a single fish filet into the batter.

And then dipped the battered fish filet into the hot oil.

Umm my cooking oil was way too hot which resulted in burned fish that tasted bitter though crispy.

Fuck that! I lowered the temp of my oil, and put all the fish into the batter and swirled the fish in the batter with my hands to coat the protein.

And then washed my hands and broke out the tongs to pick up the fish from the batter to drop into the slightly cooler cooking oil.

I lowered the temp of the cooking oil too much because it took quite a while to cook AND crisp the fish. And so I raised the temp past medium high to not so high.

Once the fish was cooked, I summoned the hubs to the taco bar. He instantly plopped down 4 tortillas into a hot pan and drizzled them with a little garlic oil. Clever. And then he plunked down cheese first into his taco build. S.O. W.R.O.N.G. But to each his own. And I do often make macaroni and cheese whenever I bake beer battered fish for dinner.

Then red onion, lime crema, lettuce and... red salsa? I didn't even make pico de gallo because really tomatoes go with red meat tacos. I verbally objected to his taco toppings, to which he said, you do you, I do me. 

When I construct my own fish tacos, I like to lay down the lime crema first.

And then I lay down a layer of chopped white cabbage and then guacamole and then fish.

And then a little more lime crema on top of the fish, a little more cilantro, and oh why the hell not....I put red salsa too on my fish tacos. And carrot and jalapeno and cauliflower pickles because I like a vegetable heavy meal.

I thought I had grabbed Pacifico and not Corona beer, it's all Mexican and all good.