Friday, November 16, 2007

Say Wahoo!

Wahoo (Fish) Tacos with Lime-Garlic-Cilantro Crema

So, in an effort to use up more of the aforementioned wahoo, I decided to make tacos. Now, when I say, “Let’s have tacos for dinner,” Rob thinks Taco Bell. That’s not what I had in mind. Traditional Mexican cooking does not include melted orange gunk, and I wasn’t about to cook up a pan of Grade D ground beef. Words that Rob never wants to hear in reference to what he’s eating: lime-garlic-cilantro crema. Oh well. It was good! This was also adapted from a Cooking Light recipe.

I cut the fish into fillets, which is one of the most disgusting tasks ever. I’d rather scoop the litter box with my bare hands. Into the raw fish, I rubbed a mixture of spices. The ratio was probably something like 1 part cumin, 1 part coriander, 1 part chili powder, ½ part garlic powder, ¼ part crushed red pepper and just a few shakes/grinds of salt and pepper. You could definitely up the spice factor on this with more red pepper. The fish was baked at 425 degrees for about 10 minutes, until it flaked easily with a fork (the best way to tell when most kinds of fish are done.) Into a bowl went the cooked fish, and I broke it up into bite-size chunks with a fork.

Split the fish between some warmed tortillas. I stupidly bought the fajita kind, but you should get the smallest kind possible. Add some shredded romaine (shred it yourself instead of buying the pre-shredded kind, it tastes so much crisper) on top of each and top with lime-garlic-cilantro crema. For this, mix equal parts sour cream and mayonnaise (Mayonnaise freaks me out a bit, but I happened to have some Veganaisse around, and it worked fine) and then equal parts of thinly sliced green onions and chopped cilantro. Add garlic, as much as you’d like, along with a few big squeezes of lime juice and, even more importantly, some grated lime rind. Mix it up and adjust it to taste.

In the pictures, you can’t really see the crema too well, but that’s because I got the world’s largest tortillas and by the time they were done, I was ready to just devour them, so we only got one picture before I had a taco in my mouth.



I served this with a corn and black bean salsa/salad, which was tossed with cilantro, lime juice, olive oil and a bit of salt.



I liked this one a lot— you had to tear a bunch of the tortilla off in order to get at the good stuff inside, but I thought the tanginess of the crema was a nice compliment to the slightly spicy fish.

Rob was “pleasantly surprised,” which is pretty much the best compliment you can hope to get when feeding him something he’s never tried before. He gave the tacos 8 hot dogs, and the salsa 6 (because he really only seems to like liquid-y salsas whereas I am more of a chunky salsa kind of girl), so we’ll even it out to 7.




You know what the worst part is? Right after I made this and effectively finished the wahoo, we went to visit Rob’s family, at which point his stepmother sent us home with another 10 pound bag of it. And a 10 pound bag of mahi-mahi. Looks like I need to come up with some good fish recipes.

Got any you’d like to submit?
Send 'em to thefoodsex@gmail.com

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