Wednesday! Wednesday! Wednesday!

When I think Wednesday, I think... fish tacos? Ok, so tonight was a grand experiment. My first time making fish tacos and I made the whole thing up as I went. I will admit from the get go that I learned two things tonight. 1 - once you get a good fish fry mix down, never stray from it. NEVER! 2 - salad in a bag may be a good idea, but shredded cabbage in a bag has a FUNKAY flavor. Never again will I buy bagged cabbage, had to toss out a whole thing of spicy cole slaw. Boo.

So the evening began with Syd and I making cole slaw together. I will say that over all the years that I have been cooking and the MANY times that I have made coleslaw, I have yet to find a coleslaw recipe that I truly love. I mean, my homemade fish fry, can't beat it. My chocolate mousse, took years to perfect. My souffles, unexplainably perfect every time. And the one thing that I can't get my own signature recipe down for is coleslaw? Really? Coleslaw. And every time I try it I convince myself that THIS will be the one that will be delicious. And so far... fail. The one good thing that came out of this coleslaw dish was that Syd and I had fun making it. She likes throwing cabbage on the floor and watching Iverson dive for it, which Iverson loves as well. It was a win win situation for everyone.

I am sparing everyone the coleslaw recipe, instead I recommend just doing more of the other accompaniments. More corn, more chopped lettuce, etc.

So fish tacos... E-A-S-Y. Love it. First thing down, make your sour cream. I juiced two tiny little limes into a bowl, added sour cream, salt, cayenne, paprika and dried cilantro to taste. Stir it and voila! Fancy sour cream. I pop this in the fridge so that it is nice and cool when dinner is ready. On to my corn. I got a fresh ear of sweet corn and cut the kernels off. This is something I love doing because it reminds me of being a kid in a way that nothing else can. I can even remember the first time I was allowed to cut the kernels off by myself. A very proud moment. So I cut the kernels off and toss them into a pan with a pat of butter and a drop of oil. I grate one clove of garlic and toss it in as well because I am feeling sassy tonight. As that warmed up I chopped up a tomato, finely sliced a big handful of romaine and sliced my fish into small strips. I do my fish pieces pretty small. I like the flavor of the batter and since I batter them extremely lightly you can barely taste it unless the piece are small. They also cook super fast which is nice. As you are slicing up your fish toss the corn around and turn off the heat if it is done.

Get a big pan and pour a bunch of oil in it. Enough to thickly coat the bottom. Medium/High heat.

Now I make a little bowl of milk and a little bowl of fish fry. My fish fry goes like this... millet flour, rice flour, pinch of cayenne, cajun seasoning, fresh black pepper (lots), sea salt, garlic powder, paprika. I will not even sit here and pretend to tell you how much i put in of each of these things, I have no clue. But I will tell you this, after you make it once you will taste any mistakes that you made and you can fix them the next time. That is the best part. It is dumb luck to get something perfect the first time, and nobody likes people who skate by on dumb luck. ;-) I mean.. When you hit the nail on the head with a dish the first time you make it you feel like you have done something great, but there is this great sense of knowing that you feel only when you have also learned how you can mess it up.

So after I make my fish fry bowl and my milk bowl, I organize my lettuce, tomato and corn onto a happy little condiment plate. You can also do diced red onion here, but I aint got none. Ya heard. Time to check dat oil. Now instead of a thermometer for oil I use this high tech device that you may or may not have heard of. I think the common term is "wooden spoon," but I am not really sure. And yes, I use this device whether I am cooking in just a little oil or a ton of oil. You stick your wooden spoon into the oil, if little bubbles start to appear around it slowly your oil is hot but not crazy hot, if lots of bubble form pretty quickly than you oil is crazy good hot. If you can actually hear a sizzle and there are bubbles that are causing oil to spurt up, turn the heat down, what you tryin' to do burn down the house?? And yes, this is a scientifically proven method, FDA, EPA, CIA and DEA approved.

Fish goes in milk, shake it off. Fish goes in fry mix, spin it round, shake it off. Toss it in the pan with the oil that bubbled around your wooden spoon. Milk, Fry, Toss, Repeat, Milk, Fry, Toss, Repeat. Load it up. Then flip it. Try to go in a clockwise pattern so that when you flip you can follow the order that you tossed in. My little fish pieces take only a couple minutes on each side, so once I am done flipping I can pretty much just start removing them in the same order that I flipped. I put my fish onto a plate with a dish cloth on it, not paper towels. I like how the cloth absorbs way more oil than the paper towel and I didn't have to kill any trees in the frying of my fish.

With the fish done I turn on a rogue burner and toss a tortilla straight onto the fire. Forget the pan, just slap that baby on there. After a few seconds flip it with tongs, and repeat this a few times until the tortilla is warm, not burnt.

All tortillas get a slather of spicy sour cream out of the fridge, a bunch of fishies, lettuce, corn and tomato. Sadly I would have loved to have coleslaw on this dish as well, but it was not meant to be.

These fish tacos rocked. Next time though, I want a different fish. Tilapia has great texture, but that's about it. To bad BP took away all my fish.

Until next time...