Unpacking is a whole lot of work. When I get an opportunity to take a break, I relish it, and over the last week I’ve been spending a lot of my down time watching some of the more obscure television, like Planet Green or FitTV. I think what has happened is that I have found my kitchen mojo, and I really desire to get back to cooking, but what I am still missing is some inspiration. Food Network, sadly, just doesn’t provide much cooking inspiration these days. I am looking forward to the new Cooking Channel, but it’s surprising how many networks these days offer up cooking shows. Planet Green has several great ones, but what surprised me the other day was when I stumbled on a show on FitTV called “Just Cook This with Sam The Cooking Guy”.
Sam totally cracked me up. His cooking was very straightforward, healthful, and he does it all right in his own kitchen. He doesn’t use cooking swap-outs either. Everything he cooked (at least the day I watched) cooked in real time right on camera. One of the things he was making was a fish taco with red snapper, it sounded good to me, so I continued watching. The only fish tacos I’ve ever made or had involve deep fat frying the fish first, so imagine how surprised I was when he diced up this fish and threw it in a hot pan with onions and seasonings. Oh! This was a revelation! I always cook fish as fillets- whether it be fried, broiled or grilled, I have never diced up a piece of fish for anything. Doing so resulted in some really fast cooking fish ready to fill a taco with. I had to try and I had to try my own variation.
So I started with some Alaskan Pollock. A plain old fish that is really inexpensive, and takes on the flavors of whatever you add to it. I thawed it, diced it, and then tossed it simply with sea salt, pepper, and ground cumin.
I got out my wok to cook my fish, and to the wok I added some peanut oil, and then a diced onion. I cooked this onion until it just started turning golden around the edges.
Then I added the fish. I cooked and stirred the fish until it was no longer translucent, and then I added a handful of cilantro, scallions, and the juice of half a lime. Seriously, this took less than five minutes. What took the longest in preparing this dinner was slicing and dicing the accompaniments.
I finely shredded some green cabbage, diced a mango, and then had more cilantro and scallions for table-side. I got out some salsas, sour cream, cheese and black olives (those last two were really for the kids). We had both flour and corn tortillas warmed and at the ready. Finally, I freshly sliced a lime so everyone could squeeze some freshly onto their tacos.
These tacos were some of the best fish tacos I ever ate. Dicing and sauteeing the fish worked so incredibly well! The cabbage and the mango were perfect taco toppings- and it really surprised me how well the mango paired with the fish. I think I preferred the flavor of the corn tortillas over the flour tortillas, but the flour ones weren’t that bad either. Andy tried one where he wrapped a flour tortilla around the corn tortilla, and he said that worked really well too.
This is non-recipe cooking at it’s finest. Use whatever white fish you can find on sale. Add whatever toppings you think your family would like, with whatever tortillas you like. Following this simple method, you can have fish tacos on the table in less than 10 minutes- depending on how long it takes you to slice and dice. Hot sauce would be a very welcome addition, and I thought some sliced radishes also would have been a tasty addition. Whatever you add, make these tacos, and make them your own!
