Tacos

Bonus Food Pics From Yummy Taco, Handsome Devil & Fiddlestix

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yummy taco chicken and beef burrito

One of the more frustrating things about where we live is that there’s not a great taco place that we can run into when we have that hankering. There’s a nice Mexican place, but it’s sit-down and sometimes I want to just call in a bag of tacos and have my wife pick them up on her way home from work. So, we got pretty excited when we were leaving Target one day and saw a new place called Yummy Taco opening up soon. Well, the other weekend it was actually in business, we gave it a shot and all had pretty delightful food. Above you can see the chicken and beef burrito I had which was more of a giant taco, but who’s counting? I will say that this is a rather interesting establishment because everything about it screams “Chinese food place” from the decorations and staff to the picture menu above the ordering station. But, none of that matters when you realize they’re making their own tortillas on the spot and making killer food. It’s still not super close, but it’s nice to know there’s a solid taco joint nearby we can hit up while running errands.

handsome devil bbq

About a month ago, my inlaws came into town and watched our daughter while my wife and I went out for a nice Italian dinner around Valentine’s Day. Meanwhile, they discovered a new barbecue joint we didn’t even know about called Handsome Devil that’s actually above an ice skating rink (that we also didn’t know about). We’ve actually got a lot of solid BBQ joints nearby, but I think this one will be tops on our list. Brothers has been so-so and Johnny D’s is a bit far away for more of a casual dinner, so Handsome Devil takes the top spot. I had the ribs and pulled pork along with some mac and cheese and onion rings, all of which were delightful. Plus, they’ve got a variety of local beers on tap which I always appreciate.

fiddlestix bangers and mash

And finally, I have to sing the praises of Fiddlestix once again. The above photo comes from their St. Patrick’s Day menu which, as always, was some of the best Irish food I’ve ever had. This is the bangers and mash which was so good I wish I could have it every day. The mashed potatoes had a healthy, but not overpowering dose of horseradish which made for a delightful side. Looking at this picture is actually making me hungry.

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Recipe Roundup: Smitten Kitchen

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baked-pasta-with-broccoli-rabe-and-sausage2As I said in a recent post compiling various recently attempted recipes from the site Closet Cooking, I’ve tried a lot of recipes in the past several months and done very little posting, so it’s time to go through the images, write down my spotty memories and get these things out there into the internet where they will hopefully jog my memory later on and encourage other people to give them a try. This batch of three all come from the cooking site I’ve been following the longest: Smitten Kitchen!

Chicken Tacos

I’m always interested in checking out a new recipe for tacos and this certainly fit the bill. I don’t think I’d ever made chicken ones before and the flavor on these were pretty solid if memory serves. I especially like the way you cook the chicken which is fairly hands-off and super easy. Combine all ingredients in a pan and boil for a half hour. This gives you plenty of time to chop up the rest of your taco fixins. I don’t quite remember why I didn’t make the salsa fresca that’s also mentioned in the post. Instead I whipped up a crema (sour cream combined with avocado, salt, oil, onion and some green Tabasco). One of these days I’d like to give this one a shot with bone-in chicken because I understand there’s more flavor there.

Baked Pasta With Broccoli Rabe & Sausage

baked-pasta-with-broccoli-rabe-and-sausage1

Apparently I only snapped a few pictures when I tried out this recipe. I remember this being a pretty easy thing to put together and the results being a kind of sausage-y, rabe-y mac and cheese and there’s nothing wrong with that. Actually, seeing this recipe again makes me want to give it another try in the next few weeks.

Pasta With White Beans

While I only snapped two pictures of the previous meal, I can’t seem to find a single image from either of the two times I made Pasta with White Beans (I skipped the rosemary oil because my wife is not a fan of that particular herb). Another easy meal to put together thanks to all the food processing, I really enjoyed the flavors combined for this recipe, but will note that all those beans can lead to some evenings punctuated by the most musical of fruits.

Cooking Closet Cooking’s Black Bean, Corn & Quinoa Picadillo Tacos

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A few months back I was getting a little bored with my usual food blogs. They’re still great and all, but I needed an injection of newness. So, I did a bunch of looking around and came across one called Closet Cooking that I absolutely love. One of the best recipes I’ve made from this blog are the Black Bean, Corn & Quinoa Picadillo Tacos which not only helped make tacos more interesting, but also added a lot more flavors into the kind of Mexican food I’m used to making. I’d never made picadillo before, so I followed this recipe to the letter. The veggies went into the pan while the quinoa cooked. Then, all that and the other ingredients went into a big bowl for mixing.

Since the avocados I picked up were a little funky looking, I decided to make a sauce with some leftover dill and buttermilk that were hanging out in the fridge as well as some tomato and onion. It was a little unusual, but certainly offered some more tang to the dish. In addition to that, I served the usual accoutrements: chopped tomatoes, torn lettuce, sour cream and shredded cheddar.

The two elements of this dish that really jumped out at me were the green olives and golden raisins which offered a nice sourness and sweetness to various bites during dinner. I’m a huge green olive fan, so I enjoy bringing them into play whenever it makes sense. I will definitely be making this recipe again and checking out some of the other picadillo recipes on Closet Cooking!

Cooking Tacos Al Pastor With Grilled Pineapple Salsa

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I don’t quite remember how I came across the recipe for Tacos A Pastor With Grilled Pineapple Salsa on My Recipes, but I did. I think I was looking for something to make out of pork tenderloin because it was on sale at the grocery store. Anyway, the only change I made to the directions involved cooking the pork on a cast iron skillet instead of a grill because, well, I don’t have a grill. I also cut out the cilantro and the chipotle chili because they run a bit too hot for my liking.

The prep for this is pretty simple. Create a rub, cover the pork chops and throw them on the grill pan. Meanwhile, there’s the salsa. I grilled the pineapple before the meat so I’d be able to work on that while the meat cooked. Again, this was a super simple process. I also cut up some limes and shredded some cheddar cheese. With all that done, it was time to eat!

I enjoyed the tanginess of the pineapple salsa which bounced well off of the spicy-ish pork. Everything played well together, making this a pretty solid choice if you’re looking to mix things up with the taco portion of your menu.

Cooking Ingrid Hoffmann’s Crackling Fish Tacos With Chipotle Tartar Sauce

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I know a lot of people like to stick with a particular recipe when they realize how much they like it. I’m not of that school. Yes, I’ll take note of that particular recipe, but I’m always looking for new and different ways to prepare food. That can be a little disappointing when you’ve found a really solid way of making a dish and then only seem to come across lesser ones. I went into Ingrid Hoffman’s Food Network recipe for Crackling Fish Tacos with Chipotle Tartar Sauce which was fairly similar to the delightful Baja Fish Tacos I’ve made and enjoyed several times. And while I didn’t like this new recipe better than the old one, it was still a good dish that would have been all the better had I remembered to pick up a few tomatoes and cheese to serve along with the other sides.

Aside from those gaffs, I followed the recipe pretty closely. I forget what kind of white fish I used, but I want to say tilapia. As you can see I got the chipotle tartar sauce together first and then worked on cutting, dredging and frying the fish chunks. While the actual prep for cooking the fish wasn’t all that different between the two recipes, I’d say the garnishes were. I really like that this one uses cucumbers which have a really nice crunch, but also bring in some moisture. However, my wife and I both found the chipotle tartar sauce to be way too hot. It’s those canned chipotles in adobo sauce that always get me. I’ve got to come up with a good alterative for those guys because they’re way too hot.

Overall, this was a good recipe, but it didn’t knock the Baja Fish Tacos out of the top spot, but it did bring a few new add-ons into play that I think will work well in the future. One of the great things about trying all these different recipes and them turning out pretty well is that it’s creating a kind of knowledge repository in my brain (greatly aided by this blog which is essentially me external hard drive for food) that allows me to mix and match elements from different dishes. Heck, maybe I’ll be coming up with my own before too long!

Forgotten Food: Chicken Tacos With Tomatillos

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Unfortunatley, I not only don’t remember how this recipe turned out — though I don’t remember it being bad — I also can’t seem to figure out where I got the recipe from! It looks like I cooked the chicken in some olive oil in one pan while grilling the tomatillos and chili in a cast iron grill skillet. From looking at the pictures, I think that red bell pepper was in there on accident.

Anyway, once the tomatillos and pepper were done being grilled it looks like they were boiled in a little bit of water. They then went into a food processor with some onion, garlic, honey and lime. That mixture was then cooked with the shredded chicken and that was the main thrust of the dish from the looks of it. I also shredded some cheddar cheese, cut some lime wedges, opened the sour cream and toasted a few tortillas on the oven. I want to say the results were good, but I really can’t remember. Luckily, I’ve made things like this enough that I think I could probably recreate it from the pictures!

*UPDATE* I think I found the recipe! Pretty sure it’s FoodNetwork.com’s Grilled Chicken Tostadas al Carbon With Grilled Tomatillos.

Bonus Food Pic: The Cool Ranch Dorito Taco From Taco Bell

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cool ranch dorito taco For all the writing I do about grinding my own meat, trying to find more local sources for produce and protein and keeping an eye on my caloric intake with the Lose It! app, I’m still the kind of guy who dreams about heading to Taco Bell, throwing down a few bucks and scarfing down a small mountain of faux Mexican food. I like to think I come by it honestly. You see, Toledo, the town that I’m from actually has three T-Bells on one of the city’s major thoroughfares with the two furthest ones only about 20 minutes from each other. As a kid and young adult, we’d head there and get food and I kept that tradition alive into my adulthood our here in New York. Heck, I even stopped there the day I heard about a rash of Bell-based food poisoning outbreaks about five years back. After hearing the news on the radio I thought, “Mmm, Taco Bell. I’m sure I won’t get food poisoning (and I didn’t, at least that time).

There was even a part of me that was ashamed that it took me so long to actually taste a Dorito-flavored taco shell at the restaurant. It’s the same part of my brain that misses seeing big-time superhero movies in the theater on opening night. It’s just something the old me would have done in a heartbeat that older me can’t without lots of scheduling and worries of health and whatnot.

Anyway, last weekend my wife and I both checked our points and decided to get some dinner at T-Bell while we were out running some errands. Of course, we both had to try the Cool Ranch version of the taco, something we were both excited about. Heck, much like the above commercial, I was one of the people who immediately said, “They should do Cool Ranch” as soon as I heard about the regular Dorito taco shell. As it happens, Cool Ranch is my favorite Dorito flavor, though much like Taco Bell, they’re not really a regular part of my life anymore because I will eat a ton of them in a single sitting and that’s not good for someone who counts going to the grocery store as exercise.

So, I should get to the main event. I tried the taco and it was pretty good, but definitely salty. My wife read some account that said the flavor of the heavily spiced meat tends to wash out the Cool Ranch flavor, so I went in making the conscious decision to put my tongue directly on the shell every time I bit. That way, I definitely got the flavor every single time. And it definitely worked. I’m still not one hundred perfect sure if this fits in with the “two great tastes that taste great together” category as one definitely seems to outdo the other, but I’d say it’s a fun experiment with pretty good results.

Cooking Homesick Texan Carnitas With Avocado Dressing & Asian Carrot Slaw

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It seems like I just can’t recreate the success I had the first time I made Smitten Kitchen’s Homesick Texas Carnitas. It’s a super simple recipe that involves a few ingredients and a bunch of time, but the last time I did it I accidentally bought beef instead of pork and then this time I didn’t chop it up ahead of time. Both times the results were pretty good, I just want to nail the procedure again, you know?

Anyway, I’ve already talked about making that dish, so I want to write about a few of the accouterments I made to go along with it. For whatever reason I had a brain fart when planning the menu that week and didn’t plan on serving the carnitas with anything other than a tortilla. Scrambling, I used what I had at hand to make Paula Deen’s Avocado Dressing and Martha Stewart’s Asian Carrot Slaw. The latter might seem like kind of a strange choice, but the only veggies I had in the house were carrots and I thought the Asian flavorings would bring something interesting to the table.

The Avocado Dressing was alright, but it being a Paula Deen recipe, there’s a good deal of mayo in there which I thought threw the flavor off a little. Since then I’ve made an Avocado Crema that I’ll write about eventually that actually had no dairy or condiments involved and tasted a lot more avocado-y which is what I wanted. Still, it was an okay addition that worked well with everything else on the plate.

The Asian Carrot Slaw actually wound up working really well with the carnitas. I kind of figured this would be the case when I saw that lime was a main ingredient, which is also in the carnitas, of course. I liked the tang that the sesame seeds and vinegar brought to the table and think I might be onto a cool flavor combination here. Anyone want to start a food truck?

Bonus Food Pics: Ruby Tuesday’s Black & Blue, Fish Tacos

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As I snapped a picture of my food at Ruby Tuesday’s a week ago, my wife asked why I was bothering. I thought about it for a second and said that I should give chain restaurants the same opportunities on MATK as local ones. I’m actually a big fan of Ruby Tuesday’s and have been since one opened in Toledo as a kid. I’m a sucker for a good salad bar and think they’ve got a pretty good one.

Anyway, I started our meal off with a Black and Blue, which is a combination of Guinness and Blue Moon. I don’t think I’d ever had even a black and tan, but the combination was fun. I’m a big fan of combos, so this was up my alley, especially because they gave me the can of Guinness, so it was like getting two beers.

For dinner I went with the fish tacos which were alright. I’ve definitely had better, but I’ve also had worse. They were a bit spicy, but not too bad. Overall it was a good dinner with good service and the quality salad bar, so I left happy.

Cooking Fantastic Taco Casserole

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Ground Beef & Taco Seasoning
Taco Casserole Ingredients
Bean Mix, Chip Crust
Casserole In The Oven
Tomatoes On Top
Taco Casserole Plated

Last week wound up being super hot so I wanted to try and make dinners that wouldn’t heat up the house too much. I also decided to cook things at different times of the day than normal to try and avoid all that heat all at once. I stumbled across this recipe for Fantastic Taco Casserole on Food.com and while it still involved cooking with a 375 degree oven, it didn’t take too long. I also cooked the ground beef in the taco seasoning around noon while my daughter ate lunch. I just let it cool down and eventually popped it in the fridge and got it out later on when constructing the casserole.

The only big change I made to the recipe was using garbanzo beans instead of refried beans. I thought I had the latter in my pantry, but only had the former and decided to just go with it. How’d that work out? Gimme a paragraph and I’ll let you know.

So, you basically just put tortilla chips on the bottom of an oven safe bowl. You then mix the beans with half the cheese and a cup of salsa. Since I didn’t use refried, there was no cooking involved right there. Anyway, you basically just layer everything in the dish and then pop it in the oven. While that’s in there, I cut up the tomatoes and those went on top when it came out. Boom, you’re done. And you know what? It was great.

I loved how the chips got a little mushy and turned into an actual salty crust that I dug. Everything else is pure taco, but in a bowl and you don’t have to set up a whole huge spread just to make tacos. Don’t get me wrong, I like making tacos, but this is about a billion times earlier. Oh, and the garbanzo beans? I really liked them. My wife noted that using them actually kept the dish a little lighter than it would have been with the refried variety. I think she nailed it. While you get the added protein of a bean, it’s not the thick gooey kind you get with refried beans. And, hey, it only took a little bit of time and not a lot of heat, so I’m very cool with it.

Bonus Food Pic: Tacos!

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We have a lot of tacos in our house. Sometimes I try fancy ones like baja fish or carnitas or interesting ones that are Greek themed, but mostly I just whip up some good ol’ fashioned normal tacos with a kit, pound of ground beef, shredded cheese, sour cream and some veggies. I’ve posted about my methods before and did pretty much the same thing, but this time I used ground turkey, store-bought taco seasoning and hard shells. I also happened to have some verde salsa on hand. I thought they looked pretty colorful and figured sharing the picture wouldn’t hurt.

Cooking Jeff Mauro’s Greek Tacos

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Cucumber Tomato Relish Ingedients
Cucumber Tomato Relish
Feta Mint Tzatziki Ingredients
Shredding Cucumbers
Draining Cucumber Shreds
Cucumbers, Yogurt, Feta, Garlic & Mint For Tzatziki Sauce
Feta Mint Tzatziki
Greek Taco Ingredients
Ground Lamb Cooking
Meat Removed; Onions, Garlic & Oregano Added To Pan
Tomato Paste Added
Onions Cooked Down
Lamb Added Back In
Flaming Pitas
Greek Taco Spread
Greek Tacos Plated

As anyone who read my early posts about Next Food Network Star, I was pulling for Jeff to win. I liked him as a person, he seemed to make good food and I didn’t want Penny to win. However, I’ve only seen a few episodes of his show and haven’t made any of his recipes just yet. Why’s that? Well, the show’s on at an odd time and I tend not to make sandwich type things for dinner. I worked in a sandwich shop for years and don’t find putting them together as relaxing as cooking more traditional meals. However, when I stumbled upon his recipe for Greek Tacos, I figured that was far enough away from my job and enough in my wheelhouse to give it a try.

As you can see from following the link, he breaks the meal down into three parts. You’ve got to cook the lamb and then also make the Feta Mint Tzatziki and the Cucumber Tomato Relish. In an effort to pace myself well, I decided to do them in reverse order of that, starting with the easiest part: making the relish. You’re basically just chopping up vegetables, putting them in a bowl and mixing with olive oil, red wine vinegar and pepper, so I got that done and put it in the fridge.

Next up, I tackled the tzatziki sauce which was a bit more labor intensive, but not by much. I’ve never grated cucumbers before, but that’s what the recipe said and that’s what I did. Once finished, those went into my pasta strainer and sat for the designated amount of time. While that dripped, I chopped the mint and garlic and put those in a bowl with the yogurt and feta. Once the cukes were a little more dry, then went in. Mixy mixy and you’re done.

Lastly, I went after the ground lamb. You cook it in a pan, then, once it’s brown, take it out and cook onions in the juices for five minutes before adding oregano and garlic. Follow that up with some tomato paste, let things caramelize and then put the meat back in the pan. Deglaze with red wine and you’re good to go.

I set the table up the same way I would for regular taco night which meant lots of bowls filled with lots of things. I also toasted the small non-pocket pitas on the fire and we had a really tasty meal. I think this might be a fun way to get kids who might be skeptical about trying new foods to try something new. It’s familiar (if taco night is a staple in your house like it has been in mine since I was a kid) but with some fun new elements. I’d never cooked ground lamb before but I thought it turned out well and my wife–who generally doesn’t like ground lamb–even like it, so there’s that.

Cooking Homesick Texan Carnitas With Avocado Salad & Grilled Onions & Peppers

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Homesick Texan Carnitas Ingredients
Squeezing Limes Into Orange Juice
Adding Cumin
Garlic Added To Lime Sauce
Cutting Up The Pork Butt
Cut Pork Butt
Lime Juice Added To Pork Butt In Pan
Topping Off With Water
Carnitas cooking Away
Tortillas For The Oven (Shoulda Wrapped Them In Foil)
Sliced Green Peppers & Onions
Avocado Salad Ingredients
Rolled Basil For Cutting
Chopped Tomatoes, Onions & Basil
Onions & Peppers In The Skillet With Olive Oil
Cooked Carnitas
Homesick Texan Carnitas With Grilled Peppers & Onions and Avocado Salad Table
Carnitas Plated!

A few weeks ago my wife sent me Smitten Kitchen’s recipe for Homesick Texan Carnitas. It sounded both simple and tasty, so I decided to give it a whirl. I decided to add some grilled onions and peppers because I had both lying around and also an avocado salad that’s basically just chopped avocado, tomato, onion, basil and garlic. I also served them on small tortillas, but made the mistake of heating them up on a baking sheet instead of wrapping them up in foil. The problem with doing it the way I went was that you wind up with mostly crispy tortillas.

But, like I said, the actual carnitas recipe  was easy, so I didn’t mind adding a few more things to the process. The night before we had this for dinner, I made the orange juice/lime juice/cumin/garlic/salt sauce and butchered the butt. The recipe calls for a boneless pork butt, which I recommend because trying to get the meat off those curvy bones was not easy. Prepping this stuff ahead of time was a great way to go because it meant I could easily plop the meat into my Dutch oven, pour the liquid over and then add water to start the two hour simmer period.

While that simmered for the two hours, I went back to work, returning to the kitchen when the period was over. During the 45 minute higher heat portion of the cooking time, I got the rest of my stuff done. The peppers and onions were very simple. I just sliced them up and tossed them in a cast iron grill pan until they showed the familiar grill marks I’ve seen when I order fajitas in restaurants. I’d never done this before, but winging it worked pretty well. I also got the oven ready to heat the tortillas, but like I said, it makes more sense to wrap them in tin foil to stop them from getting crispy.

I also put the avocado salad together. As you can see from the picture, all you do is chop up some basil leaves (rolling them up and then using kitchen scissors is really the way to go), two plum tomatoes, an onion and two avocados, put them in a boll and stir in the juice from a pair of squeezed limes. You could easily throw this in a food processor and you’d have guacamole, but I wanted to try it this way and see how it worked out. I actually liked the larger chunks of onions and ate some of the leftovers with chips, chips made from the toasty tortillas, actually. As my wife mentioned to me, the basil in the mix really brought something new and interesting to the table.

With all that done, I shredded up some cheddar, took the kitchen scissors to some green onions and set laid everything out on the table. It looks pretty formidable when it’s all together, but it wasn’t really that big of a deal. I’ve made tacos a lot of times using different methods, but usually stick to the basic ingredients. It was nice to try something different and mostly succeed. Also, I’ve only had carnitas a time or two, but this mixture was fantastic and citrus-y, a wonderful combination that makes me want to make carnitas over and over again.

Bonus Food Pic: Take Out From Chapala Grill

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Chapala Grill
335 Windsor Highway
New Windsor, NY 12553
845-391-3133

With the baby, I’ve found that, when I’m not cooking on weekdays, my wife and I tend to lean towards quick pick up, drive through or carry out options. A week or two back I didn’t feel like cooking or hadn’t gone to the grocery store (I don’t remember specifically, but either is highly likely) and we both thought Mexican food sounded good. I wasn’t sure, but I hoped that nearby Chapala Grill did carry out and we discovered that not only do they, but they also have their full menu online (that link up above).

As I mentioned in an earlier BFP, Chapala has really solid Mexican food. It’s not slap-you-in-the-tastebuds, blow-your-mind amazing, but it’s really good. And I can say the same for their carry out now too. The pic above is from the first time we used their services, but once again last night and it was still great. They not only give you rice and beans with your meal, but also chips and salsa which is a great bonus.

If you’re in the area and you want darn good Mexican, head on over to Chapala!

Cooking Tacos

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Taco & Tomatillo Sauce ingredients
Taco Potion #19 ingredients
Coriander in the Magic Bullet
Spices in the jar
Taco Potion #19 mixed & ready!
Tomatillos, onion & garlic
Tomatillos, garlic & onion cooking
Tomatillo sauce blended
Ground beef cooking
Lettuce chopped
Beef with Taco Potion & V8 juice
Tortillas toasting
Keeping tortillas warm
Taco table
Taco plate

While at the farm stand down the road on Monday I saw that they had tomatillos for about a buck a pound. That got the wheels turning. A while back I saved the link for Alton Brown’s Taco Potion #19, a homemade version of that packets you buy at the store. I wanted to give that a try, so when I saw the tomatillos I immediately thought to make tacos along with an altered version of Tyler Florence’s Roasted Tomatillo Chile Salsa. I’ve made the full enchilada recipe that this sauce accompanied, but have been wanting to try it with just regular tacos and will also be taking the extra along with me next week when I make those awesome fish tacos for everyone on vacation next week.

This meal wound up taking a while because there were so many steps. I started off making the Taco Potion which was super easy. The “hardest” part was blending the coriander in the Magic Bullet and the only trouble there was reaching for the Bullet. You literally just throw everything in a jar and mix it up, so there’s no real work there. I didn’t even have to buy anything because we had all the ingredients in house.

After that I put together the altered Tomatillo Chile Salsa. I skipped the jalapenos and cilantro because I’m not a fan of heat and my wife despises cilantro. I also didn’t have any actual limes in the house, so I went with some of that stuff that comes in the lime-shaped bottle. Also, since our oven doesn’t work, I just cooked the tomatillos, onion and garlic in a large pan with olive oil. To keep the heat in, I put the lid on and let them go on medium heat for 10-15 minutes. When they got blackish, I took them off the heat and eventually blended them up in the Cuisinart along with the other ingredients. I honestly didn’t notice a difference in taste with the different cooking method.

While the sauce cooled, I started cooking the ground beef for tacos in an iron skillet. I’ve made tacos enough using the directions on the taco kit box to know the basics. You brown the meat, drain the fat, add the taco spices and water, cook down and you’re done! When we have it, I throw some salsa or V8 juice in there which adds even more flavor. As the meat cooked I got the other elements of the taco bar together. I cut up some green onions from the cup with kitchen scissors, chopped lettuce, put out the tomatillo sauce, sour cream and hot sauce (my wife likes red while I like green) and shredded the cheese. Once the tacos were done cooking (ie most of the liquid had cooked off or been absorbed), I put that on a plate and started lightly toasting the tortillas on the stove with some tongs.

I’m always a fan of taco bar night going back to when I was a kid and mom made them, so this meal was great for me. However, the taco potion was a little off. I don’t think I’m a huge fan of the smoked paprika in there. The taco meat wound up tasting almost like sausage with it’s smokey flavor. It was an interesting taste, but didn’t exactly scream “tacos!” The tomatillo sauce was a great mix of tangy and sour, which is what makes it such a good taco companion. I highly recommend giving either recipe a shot next time you feel like heading south of the border. On a personal note, I like that I’m getting to a place where I’ve cooked enough recipes to know which pieces of them might make sense with other flavors and how to switch up some methods and come out with something pretty similar. I’m starting to feel like an actual cook!

Cooking Baja Fish Tacos

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The Ingredients
Chopping Cabbage
White Sauce Pre-Whisk
White Sauce Whisked
Dredges
Cutting Up Cod
Cod In Dredge
Frying Cod
The Baja Taco Bar
Aftermath
On The Plate

Last night I made Baja Fish Tacos using the Fisherman’s Market and Grill recipe posted on Food Network. I took step by step pictures as you can see above, but also wanted to add my two cents. Ingredients wise, I stuck to the recipe. For beer I used a Coors Light, I picked up some purple cabbage and went with cod for the fish. As always, I got all my non perishable ingredients together ahead of time. As I’m working in a pretty small kitchen, I scattered the ingredients around after taking that first picture. First up, I cut up the cabbage. I wound up using probably a third of the head, then gave it a spray and a whirl in the salad spinner. With that done, I moved on to put together the white sauce. I used what was left of the mayo in our refrigerator which might not have been a full cup and just whisked it all together. My wife said it tasted too much like mayonnaise, but I dug the tanginess brought out by the lemon. I popped that in the fridge and then moved on to the tempura batter. As the recipe says, I took one package and made it with water and beer in a baking dish, then poured the other one in another baking dish along with the salt and garlic powder. I moved those two containers to the side, started heating up some canola oil in a sauce pan with a candy thermometer to watch the temp. Meanwhile, I cut up the cod into small pieces. Of course, in the middle of all this, my daughter started hollering so I had to take a break to give her a bottle.

She fell asleep pretty soon and I got back to cutting. I wound up getting 1.75 pounds of fish which made a pretty big pile of cod bits. Once the oil got up to the right temp–I aimed for about 375 degrees–I started the process of dipping fish chunks in the wet dredge then into the dry tempura and dropping some in the pan with the oil letting it fry for a few minutes before moving it to a plate. I used a slotted claw spoon to fish the pieces out which worked out well. When she got home, my wife suggested I put it on a rack over an oven pan to keep the excess oil off the bottom pieces of fish. That’s a good call. This was the first time I ever fried anything. I was surprised at how easy it was. I would have used more oil and maybe a bigger pan, but I didn’t have a ton of oil and worked with what I had. Even though my fish-dunking hand turned into a huge clump of drying tempura, it all turned out great. I put the fish, white sauce, tortillas, lime slices, cabbage and some diced tommato (because I had one lying around left over from the other day) all on the table and it made a wonderfully colorful spread. My wife went down to our herb garden and grabbed some Thai basil which was a good addition.

Overall, I LOVED this dish. Man oh man, was the fried fish tasty. That batter is money. All the ingredients worked great together with the sourness of lime bouncing off the tangy white sauce and the ultra flavorful, kinda salty fried fish. We also had some hot sauce around and even though the recipe didn’t call for tomatoes, they were a great addition. I think I wound up eating five of these fantastic tacos. There were a few negatives though. All that frying stunk the house up pretty bad. Also, I wound up with a mountain of dishes I then had to clean. Ah well, I figured it was worth it because the dinner was just so damn good. This recipe will definitely become a regular fixture on my family menu!