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 food@thefoodsex.com

If you’ve ever read my other blog, you may know that Rob and I went on vacation this summer to Cape Hatteras, where we went deep sea fishing. Yeah. And caught this guy:

That’s a wahoo, which is a firm, dense white fish. I know, completely horrifying, right? What’s even more horrifying is the sheer amount of fish in our freezer that Rob’s stepmother passed off on us.

Fortunately, this past weekend we’d gone to the Pumpkin Festival at a local orchard/farm

and picked up some apple cider. So if you’re gonna get cider, you gotta get bourbon. And if you’re gonna get bourbon, you gotta glaze something.

Bourbon-Glazed Wahoo
(adapted from Cooking Light)
This would also work with salmon, tuna, or any other dense fish. Adjust the cooking time as necessary. Actually, you could probably use it on chicken or other meats too. It’s got a really sweet Asian flavor, so that seems like it’d be good.

In a Ziploc bag, mix (per fillet of fish)
1.5 TBS brown sugar
1.5 TBS bourbon (I used Evan Williams, because it’s cheap but doesn’t taste like it and it reminds me of swigging from a flask in places you’re not really allowed to have a flask)
1 TBS soy sauce
1 minced clove of garlic
the juice of one lime half
a good sprinkling of ginger and some black pepper.
Marinade these for about an hour or so, flipping the bag over a few times and really rubbing the marinade in. Yeah, rub that marinade in goooood. Mmmm–what? Anyway.

After the fishies are done marinating, heat a skillet on your stove until it’s good and hot. Dump the whole bag in, marinade and all. This wahoo took for-e-ver to cook, because it was thicker than my arm. I’d estimate it was about 8-10 minutes per side. If you had salmon, which cooks considerably more quickly, I’d guess about 4-5 minutes per side. Just poke at it a little, you’ll be able to tell when it’s done. Anyway, after the fish is done, drizzle it with the sauce leftover in the pan from the marinade. It’s so good. Sprinkle with sliced green onions and sesame seeds.

I served this with my go-to Asian side dish, Sesame Rice. I think this also may have originally come from Cooking Light too, but I’m not sure.
Quick fact about me—I cannot, to save my life, cook rice. It always comes out wrong. It’s always too sticky, not sticky enough, scorched on the bottom, whatever. I can’t do it. Thus, I resort to my only real cooking shortcut, the Walmart to my gourmet: boil-in-bag rice. You know, you can’t win em all. And I’m okay with that.
So, cook your rice and have it all ready to go. In a skillet, heat a little sesame oil. I prefer the dark kind, but the light would work too. Add to this a few handfuls of peas, carrots, broccoli, snow peas, whatever you want and some sliced green onions. The onions are key. Cook this all together for a few minutes, as long as it takes to get your veggies to a nice texture. Add a few shakes of soy sauce and some Sriracha. Mix well. Add the cooked rice and toss the whole thing together until it is well-mixed and well-heated. Turn off the heat, mix in some sesame seeds, and scarf.

Rob’s review:
8.5/10 hot dogs. He said it would have been higher had the rice not been so spicy (so, I MAY have gone a bit overboard with the Sriracha, but I liked it!)

So for a few days there, it really felt like fall in Western PA. But then the temperatures rose again, and I think the high is like 70 today. But no matter, because technically it is fall, and that means I’m making soup.

At Rob’s suggestion, I made clam chowder. I’d never done this before, so I had to read through a few recipes to try to adapt them. Apparently, clam chowder is serious business. I mean it—people in the Northeast are crazy about their clam chowder. Being from Pittsburgh, which some will argue is the Northeast, some will argue is the Midwest, I’m far less concerned. So if this recipe is not “authentic” (and I know it isn’t), don’t complain! This recipe made two very large bowls of soup–we definitely didn’t finish them!

2 eight-ounce bottles clam juice
about ½ pound red potatoes, unpeeled, cut into bite size pieces
1 tablespoon butter
1 cups chopped white onions
2 stalks of celery, chopped well (including the leaves, they are so good!)
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 bay leaf
1/4 cup flour
3 six-and-a-half-ounce cans chopped clams, drained, juices reserved
1/2 cups half and half
squirt of Sriracha (see a pattern with this?)
salt n pepa

So, pour the clam juice into a pot and add the potatoes. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat a bit to cook the potatoes—around 10 minutes, depending on how big the potato chunks are. This will make your kitchen smell a bit bad, because let’s face it, clam juice is kind of gross. Remove from heat and set aside.

In another pot, melt the butter. Add the celery, onions, garlic and bay leaf, cook until the veggies are soft (5-7 minutes, maybe?) Stir in the flour slowly and whisk like hell. Don’t let it brown. Cook about 2 minutes, stirring constantly, and then slowly begin adding the reserved juice from the clams. Keep whisking…build those whisking muscles. Try to break up any clumps of flour and veggies. Add the potatoes with the clam juice they were boiled in, half and half, canned clams and the Sriracha. Stir well and allow to simmer, stirring frequently, for 10-15 minutes, just to let it get hot, let the flavors blend and the soup thicken. Be sure to take the bay leaf out, that’s a surprise that no one wants. Season chowder with salt and pepper and slurp away.

I served it with a sprinkling of parsley and some sourdough bread. You know what, this was damn good. It would definitely have been better with fresh clams, but when you’re landlocked in the fall, you do what you can.

Rob’s review:
Also 9/10 hot dogs!

You know, I’m beginning to think Rob’s being overly nice on the giving of hot dogs because he has to live with me. If you’d like to become a hot dog rater, please come over for dinner.