Kitchen Zink - Fish Tacos

This probably shouldn’t come as much of a shock, but I’m a fairly frequent Food Network viewer.  It all began with Iron Chef America during my college years, and I’ve recently become a big fan of Chopped.  However, there is one other show that I also like quite a bit, but don’t end up watching as frequently: Throwdown with Bobby Flay.  The concept is awesome – star chef Bobby Flay challenges a cook renowned for one particular dish at their own game.  So say, hypothetically, that you make really great chili; Bobby tracks you down, shows up one day and asks you to do a chili cook-off.  There are judges, and they do choose a winner, but it’s all in good-natured fun.

Now, bear in mind that Bobby Flay is a highly regarded, classically trained Iron Chef, so he’s not really an amateur at any of these dishes.  But the overriding idea is so good that it was my inspiration to learn how to make one thing “right” each month, back when I was making cooking goals in January.  I haven’t done one yet, and I’m not sure if it ever will, but if I had, the first one was almost certainly going to be fish tacos.  Well, fish tacos happened to be on the menu this Monday.  There ended up being much to learn, so I may have to do my research post-cooking, so that my next foray will turn out better.  The ones we had Monday weren’t bad, but let’s just say that I wouldn’t win the Throwdown against many other cooks.

Fish tacos are one of my favorite foods, and have been since the first time I tried them.  Stacia can tell you that I would be happy to eat Mexican food any day of the week, but changing the protein base to something so different really makes for a light, fresh take that I enjoy.  Every time we make them at home, and each time I’ve ordered them dining out (TGI Friday’s and especially Star Bar in Des Moines) has been a positive experience.  So, let’s head into the kitchen and see how they turned out this time.

A dish like fish tacos presents you with a lot of interesting choices.  Tortillas – crunchy or soft, corn or flour?  Fish – which variety, grilled or fried?  Toppings – Cabbage or coleslaw, fruit salsa, guacamole?  Like anything, this all comes down to personal preference, but in sampling many variations over the years, I think I know which I prefer.  The only ambiguous choice is the grilled or fried question, since I like each in its own way.  But at home we’ve traditionally done grilled, and I wanted a new challenge, so we went with the fried.  The plan became – BHG’s oven fried fish, using Hy-Vee’s “whole” catfish (don’t worry – no guts, just a tail and spine), served on flour tortillas and topped with BHG’s creamy coleslaw and our own home-canned salsa, which I think is too sweet for just snacking but should complement fish nicely.

The first step was hacking apart the fish into nice-sized chunks, which ended up not being gory at all.  It was a first time really filleting a fish, and I think we left a lot of meat on the bones, but I’m considering making fish stock with the rest if that’s even doable with catfish.  We modified the breading spices from the cookbook’s parmesan and dill(?) to cumin, cayenne and black pepper, coated the chunks with flour and the spiced bread crumbs, and threw them in the oven.  Making the coleslaw was supremely easy, just tossing one of those pre-packed slaw mixes with mayo, vinegar, sugar and celery seeds.

It started to become apparent that these weren’t Throwdown-winning tacos when the fish came out of the oven, and though cooked, weren’t really crispy.  Although we’ve had some success using the oven to replicate fried foods, these really weren’t the same.  In addition, the quantities for the spices that we’d guessed at ended up being far too mild, so I needed to add Cholula to spice up individual tacos.  With the fish not too zippy, just a basic coleslaw, and a salsa that was more sweet than spicy, the whole affair ended up being more of a fish wrap than a taco per se.

Don’t get me wrong – everything was fine, and between the two of us we ate everything we made, but for a food I love so much, I was really hoping for stellar results.  I know we have done better with grilled fish, and will certainly return to those in the future too.  But I want to be able to make the fried guys as well, and I’m already looking into better ways to get there.  My contention is that we need a deep fryer to really do the job, something that Stacia might be on board with now, so we may actually be allowed to buy one.

Finally, though catfish worked well for the fried variant here, I don’t think I’d go with it for grilled.  Ideal would be Mahi-mahi, but the foreign mahi fisheries aren’t well managed, and I can’t get US mahi in Des Moines.  Probably the best option is Tilapia, which is a “good alternative” if sourced from Central America.  That’s probably the most common choice in restaurants; they’re much firmer than catfish, which is really what you want for a grilled fish.

I don’t want to grade the results or rank them with stars, but I do think I would give this meal another try, with the caveat that I find a better way to fry or go with grilled next time around.  Ordinarily you’d now be able to see a picture, but we already ate all the tacos, so you’ll have to use your imagination ‘til next time.