Fish Tacos

I didn’t know what I wanted to make for dinner the other night when I went to the Italian market, which is often how my grocery shopping begins. I had a vague idea that I would buy some fish to complement whichever of my veggies I decided to pull out of the fridge, but no real plan as to how they would be combined. One of the wonderful guys behind the fish counter at Agata & Valentina cut a couple of Spanish mackerel filets right off the fish for me, and I thought maybe I’d just broil them, drizzle with harissa, and serve with fresh bread and barely cooked sugar snaps. But then when I made my second grocery stop, I forgot about that menu because I saw soft corn tortillas, and I could practically hear them screaming “fish tacos” at me. Luckily, the mackerel was amenable to this change in plans, and so was C.

I sliced up some cucumbers, radishes, and red onion on the mandoline, as close to paper thin as I could get them. Then I tossed them together with a little salt, a little agave nectar, some rice wine vinegar, and let them sit.

Meanwhile I chopped lettuce, heated up the tortillas (a minute per side in a hot, dry cast iron skillet), and dealt with the fish. The filets still got broiled, with just a little vegetable oil, salt, & pepper, and then pulled apart into bite-sized chunks. 

Then it was just a matter of assembly. 

Fish Tacos
serves 3-4

1 lb fish filets (mackerel, tilapia, catfish–anything flaky and not very expensive)
vegetable oil
salt & pepper
1 medium or 2 small cucumbers
1/2 red onion
4-5 radishes
1/4 c rice vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar (or a bit less of agave nectar)
4-5 lettuce leaves
8-10 small soft tacos (corn or flour)

Slice the cucumbers, radishes, and onion very thin (a mandoline makes this very easy). Toss them together with the vinegar, salt, and sugar, and taste to see if you need to adjust the flavor. Let this sit while you prepare everything else.

Turn on the broiler. While it’s heating up, place the fish filets on a baking sheet, skinside down. Line it with foil if you want to make your clean-up easier. Drizzle the fish with a little vegetable oil, and sprinkle with a bit of salt & pepper. When the broiler is hot, put the fish in. Start checking it after 5 minutes, though it might take several minutes more, depending on how thick it is and how close to the heat source it gets in your oven. If you poke the fish at the thickest part with a sharp knife, you should meet no resistance, and it should be totally opaque.

Shred the lettuce. 

Heat a cast iron skillet (or other heavy pan) over medium-low heat. Warm the tortillas one at a time, a minute per side. 

Let your guests assemble their own tacos. Serve with the hot sauce of your choice.

Labor of Love

Last weekend–or two weekends ago, by now–was the first night of Cook Club. As I mentioned in a previous post, M., L., P., and I have started this club, and I was the first to host.  And I just have to say, I have never prepared a meal quite like that before, and I’m not likely to do it again anytime soon.  Even when it’s my turn to host again, I don’t think 6+ courses for 8 people is going to happen.  After Sunday, I needed about 2 days to recover before my brain came back online.

But the truth is that I loved every moment of it, from the trips to the greenmarket, to waiting while the fishmonger gutted & scaled my red snapper, testing the cheese, wrapping each asparagus spear–it was an utter joy.  A labor of love, as the expression goes.  In part, it was love for my friends, my delightful dinner companions, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that it was more for the love of food, the kitchen, the cooking process.  Or maybe it’s really the intersection, playing hostess, because that’s where I get to enjoy my food with my dear friends.  And nothing makes me happier than that.

I’ve done an overview of the menu already, but here are the highlights, in living color (not a terribly thorough documentation, I’m afraid, since we all got a little too caught up in the eating to remember to photograph the dessert course…).

Olives with almonds, blood oranges, dried red peppers, and thyme (Tyler Florence’s recipe), ready to go in the oven:

The table set with hors d’oeuvres (the olives, plus Smitten Kitchen’s cheese straws, and grilled asparagus wrapped in prosciutto or truffled cheese with pear mostarda):

 

Cucumber avocado soup with lime:

Ready to serve the soup course:

Spinach salad with pine nuts, golden raisins, and blood orange vinaigrette:

One of the two red snappers I cooked:

Same, after being stuffed with blood oranges, shallots, and herbs, crusted with salt & egg white and baked for a half hour or so:

And this is what was inside when we cracked open the crust:

Me, trying to portion out the tasty filets without butchering the fish too badly:

And here you can see not only both fish (one still crusted) but the potato ramp gratin in the background:

(There are loads more photos of the whole fish process at my flickr feed, courtesy of M., who served as my staff photographer for most of the night.)

And this, sadly, is the only evidence of the rhubarb tart.  The vanilla pink peppercorn ice cream went too quickly to show up on camera at all.

I think, though, that it is likely I will make the ice cream again.  The tart was good, for sure, but there is only so much time left in the rhubarb season, and if I’m going to make something else, I’ll want to try another recipe.

And so, almost 5 hours later, we declared Cook Club a success, and called our first meeting to a close.
And C. was a darling and broke the rules by doing almost all the dishes for me.  We’ve figured out the date for the next round (last weekend of June), and I for one can’t wait.  Playing hostess is the best, but being a guest can be pretty damn awesome, too.

Dinner with Friends

M. & R. came over for dinner tonight, and I took the opportunity to try my hand at a recipe from A Platter of Figs, the wonderful cookbook my wonderful cousin gave me for Christmas. The recipes are organized seasonally, and into menus. “Yellow Hunger,” from the Summer section, seemed like a good idea given the plethora of summer squash I got this week. Supplemented with some heirloom tomatoes (Mexican imports–am I going to get kicked out of the CSA?) and a piece of halibut that the fishmonger at Agata & Valentina basically cut directly off the fish for me, we had a really lovely meal.

The mise en place:

(I only pretend to know what that means)

The fish was seasoned with salt & pepper, drizzled with olive oil, and then rubbed with a mixture of cumin, fennel, coriander, clove, turmeric, and cayenne. It sat for a while as I put together a raita and the squash salad.

And here’s the finished product, sprinkled with windowbox mint:

(do real food bloggers take pictures of the cooking process, too? I’m still learning these things.)

Anything that lets me use the mandolin is fine with me, and zeppelin squash fits the bill:

Mandolined squash, dressed lightly with lemon juice and olive oil and tossed together with shaved ricotta salata.

Thankfully, M. was on hand to inform me that I needed to photograph my plate, too:

The raita was especially good: yogurt, ginger, mustard & cumin seeds, some poblano pepper… I think that was it.

M. also had the smarts to bring ice cream for dessert, and she managed to find organic sugar cones. I won’t tell you how many cones the three of us polished off.

Dinner was accompanied by a bottle of wine and some incredibly nerdy and delightful conversation about the finer points of grammar (I believe I even pulled out my illustrated Elements of Style). Then Mowgs and I walked the Ws (note: not the W’s) to the subway in the lovely, cool, post-ridiculous-thunderstorm evening.