Taco Night: Fish Tacos, Real Refried Beans, Mexican Cheese Salsa, Guacamole

Fish tacos: I hear they're transcendent, but impossible to find in New York. Pinche Tacqueria on Mott Street (they also have a place on Lafayette now) makes a pretty tasty one, but I have no West Coast reference point. Anyway, Bittman's recipe for fish tacos is the central point for his "Weekday Mexican-Style Spread," which also includes refried beans, guacamole, and salsa.

Now, Taco Night has always been a favorite in the Fishner house. My mom makes the most delicious white people tacos in the world: ground turkey, Old El Paso taco seasoning, diced tomatoes, cucumbers and grated cheese. They're great. They are totally inauthentic and totally amazing. No lime wedges, no radish slices, and sure as hell no cilantro. I've never seen anyone else serve cucumbers with tacos, but you should try it sometime, it's quite nice.

So I'm not ashamed to admit what drew me to this menu in How to Cook Everything: the salsa Bittman suggests, Mexican Cheese Salsa, has cucumbers! Feeling validated by this fact, we decided it was the perfect choice for dinner.

Guacamole, we've covered before (the menu actually suggests Crunchy Corn Guacamole, which is the same thing with 1/2 cup corn thrown in, but no corn was to be had).

The salsa is very simple: you've got diced tomatoes, cucumbers, salt, pepper, lime juice, onion, and minced chile (I used a jalapeno) along with 1/2 cup of queso fresco. This stuff is simple, really fresh tasting, and perfect for tacos (especially if you like them with cucumbers, which you probably will). It will only get better once tomato season arrives! I can't wait for tomato season. But I digress.

Now, the fish taco recipe is very flexible; it's listed as "Fish Tacos, Four Ways," because you can poach the fish, as it's suggested in the main recipe, but you can also grill, broil, or fry the fish. We opted for broiling, as it seemed the easiest: throw some olive oil, salt and pepper on the fish, stick it in the broiler until it's just barely cooked through, and you're good to go.

So that's pretty much the fish tacos; serve them with lime wedges, that rare essential garnish. I don't know about you, but I just need some extra lime juice to squeeze down on these guys.

Meanwhile, the refried beans, something that I did not expect to taste as good as it did. You take 3-4 cups of beans and mash them in some hot fat; whether it's lard, butter, or neutral oil is up to you (we opted for neutral oil, and it was still delicious). Then you add some onion, cumin, and cayenne (we were out of cayenne, and so we used some chili powder instead which worked pretty damn well) and let it cook until the onions are soft. There is room for lots of interpretation on this one. Finally, just add some of the bean liquid to thin it out to the consistency you like. Delicious.

This was definitely one of the top five meals since the project began. Spring is here, and this all tasted like it. Are you all siked? I am.

Oy Vey: Gefilte Fish

"Don't learn to make gefilte fish," Grandma Ruth told me when she heard of my plans. "It's not worth it. Learn to make something that you'll eat more than once a year." Grandma' always right, and this was no exception, as it turned out. But still, I had to do it! For the project!

You know, I never really liked gefilte fish. At this moment, though, I truly hate it. This week I finally hit my first true, flat-out, nothing doing, face down failure of the project. Sure, there have been some things that didn't come out perfect so far, but nothing that took up hours of time and more money than I'd like to admit only to leave me with nothing usable. Other than some fish stock, which I guess counts for something.

Let's start at the start. I took the day off for Passover, as my parents were hosting the seder at their place on Thursday and it seemed like as good a time as any to take a crack at How to Cook Everything's recipe for Gefilte Fish, definitely an all day affair. Now, for the uninitiated out there, gefilte fish is a processed fish that you eat at passover seders. It tastes pretty much exactly how it looks, mild and benign and a little weird, but sort of familiar and nice at the same time. It was never my favorite thing in the world, but once a year I eat half a piece and call it a day. It never actually occurred to me until I saw it in HTCE that you might think of making it from scratch.

The main ingredient here is 3 lbs. of whitefish fillets (carp or pike will do as well) and 3 lbs. of scraps (head, skeletons, etc.). You put the scraps in a pot with celery, bay leaf, peppercorns, and an onion and essentially make a stock from it. Then you take the fillets, throw 'em in the food processor with another onion, chop it up together pretty fine, add some eggs and matzoh meal, and form egg shaped balls out of this mixture. You put those in the pot with the stock and scraps and about 3 cups of carrots, and let these balls cook for about an hour and a half. Gross, right? But I bet it tastes pretty good all in all, despite the fact that 90 minutes seems like a terribly long time to cook fish. Who am I to argue with tradition, though.

So, around 10 in the morning I went the Whole Foods Theme Park, a.k.a. Whole Foods Bowery (seriously that place is unreal). The fish guy there was incredibly helpful in helping me pick out a couple whitefish, which he then filleted, skinned, and left me with the scraps in addition to the fillets. Boondoggle number one occurred when I left with just the fillets but no scraps. OK, so, cab ride back to the Bowery and then another cab home with scraps in hand (I was in a bit of a time crunch). So those go into the pot, and I turn my attention to making the fish/onion mixture. Oh, what's this! It's hundreds of pin bones still in the fillets. Trying to get them out was frustrating, I don't think I had the right tools and I'm not really very experienced with these things.

Alright, I've already been in three cabs today, what's the hurt in two more? So, back out to Whole Foods (this time the Union Square one).

"Do you have whitefish fillets? Boneless? I really need them without bones."
"Yes."
"Okay, great, I'll take three pounds. Can you take the skin off?"
"Sure."
"Awesome. And you're sure there's no bones?"
"Yes."
"Great. I'll take it."

I don't want to tell you how much I paid for those three pounds of boneless skinless filets, but suffice it to say it was in keeping with the usual Whole Foods range. So imagine my surprise when I got home to find even more pin bones than in the first batch of fillets! And for what it's worth, he also left on a fair amount of the skin. Way to half ass it, Whole Foods Union Square! It wasn't even crowded; I was the only customer at the fish counter at the time.

That's it. End of story. Pretty anticlimactic, I know. I do have a few quarts of delicious fish stock to show for my troubles, and I did think it was kind of fun preparing that fish head for the pot. I'll have to work with whole fish more often. That's a plus, one more thing I'm feeling confident about in the kitchen. Thanks for nothing, Whole Foods. You're gonna have a really angry guy returning a lot of fish fillets tomorrow morning, FYI.

Next year, in Jerusalem! Or at least in NYC, with homemade gefilte fish. You gotta be reasonable, know what I mean?

Taking Shortcuts: Quick Braised Fish with Black Bean Sauce

So, Quick Braised Whole Fish with Black Bean Sauce. I've never cooked a whole fish before, and Tuesday night at 7 didn't seem like a good time to start practicing my fish cleaning skills.


Luckily our man Bittman provides a super quick variation with filets instead of whole fish. The whole thing is very easy, but I bet it would be a lot more full flavored with a whole fish. Basically you lightly batter and fry the fish in neutral oil just to brown it. Then you remove it from the pan, add some onions, garlic, Ginger and scallions. You let those all cook until the onions are pretty soft, then add some chopped onions (I used canned, which worked nicely) and fermented black beans that have been soaking in rice wine or dry sherry. Cook that all together a while and then return the fish to the pan to finish cooking for another five minutes or so.

Served it with plain rice and some salad. It's not the dark, gummy black bean sauce you're probably thinking of from chinese restaurants. This is something a little lighter, with a good amount of veggies. The only thing I wasn't crazy about was the batter on the fish, which after being braised turned into something almost like a paste--maybe I didn't fry it at high enough heat, I don't know, but I think the next time I'd skip the batter altogether and see how that works out.

Also, I now have a huge package of fermented black beans. Anyone have any suggestions on how to use them?

Spicing It Up: Grouper or Other Thick White Fish in Yellow Curry

I used cod in this one, because it was on sale at Whole Foods. This reminds me: find a good fishmonger and butcher near Stuyvesant Town. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears. Whole Foods is expensive, and what's more, I long for a personal kind of connection with the person preparing my meats. Is that really so strange?


Anyway, this is a recipe that is endlessly variable; once I was done making it, or maybe about five minutes before I was done, I started to think that it'd do really well with some red peppers, or just about any other vegetable. Also, fish works really well here (you keep it in big chunks, which keeps it a little more tender) but I think any seafood (or even meat for that matter) would be great. Shrimp next time, maybe. In the end, it could have used more heat, and we doused it in some sriracha, but other than that, my first curry was remarkably easy and really tasty.

Apologies for the photography, I kept forgetting to take photos. What you see is the curry right before the fish when back into it.