I Just Made Some Kick Ass Fish Tacos

The title of this post should be I Just Made Some Kick Ass Fish Tacos. It's Wednesday, kinda late in the week for me to be cooking as I've found that Mondays and Tuesdays seem to be the nights I typically have the urge to fire something up. But I've kind of spent the past two days recouping (from healthy stuff for once) from a really awesome weekend. Started off Friday morning with the Ragnar Relay - a 200 mile relay footrace mostly along the coast from Ventura (just south of Santa Barbara) to Dana Point (just south of Newport Beach). Teams of 12 people (over 200 teams!), each runner has three legs to run ranging anywhere from 5-10 miles a run, and the race is non-stop over about 24 hours. I ended up running the equivalent of half-a-marathon (4 miler at 10AM thru Oxnard, then 5 miles thru Van Nuys at 10PM, then 4 very surreal miles past power plants, strip clubs, and nothing, over a few bridges and thru a remote industrial area of Long Beach at 5AM). I'm not someone that usually does these kind of extreme events, but I had a ton of

fun, and was quite proud of myself when it was over. I'm still in shape from all the training and running, so I'm gonna try to keep that up for as long as I can.

Anyway, picking up a few things at the fresh market down the street, I saw some tilapia behind the fish counter - perfect - I've been getting a little tired of chicken and have been looking to make something new... like fish tacos. This ended up being really really good and simple and quick...I shall be goin fishin for more very soon.

Fish, sa sa simple: Season the fish with salt, pepper, cumin, chili, garlic powder (ran outta fresh garlic). Sear in a hot pan with some diced onion. Only takes about a minute on each side before it's nice and brown and smelling all kinds of good. Put that to the side.

Salsa: Diced onion, diced tomato, diced ripe avocado, chopped cilantro, juice from half a lime, salt pepper, garlic powder. Mix it all up. You can seriously just eat it straight up with a spoon and nothing else its so good.

Heat up some tortillas flat on a hot, lightly oiled pan. . . then make yo'self some tacos fool! Extra squeeze o' lime, and voila. Chowwwww time! Dee. Lish. Us.

Actually I think next time I will add some cabbage or cole slaw . . . so there will be a next time.

FYI - my Ragnar team, the Silent But Deadly Fartleks (har har, a Fartlek is a type of training run), came in SEVENTH out of over 200 teams. Extreeeeeme duuuude! Must've been all that Mountain Dew...

(Above Video courtesy of Munir Haddad, fellow Fartlek, and all around swell guy)

Tuesday's Gone, With Chick-In

Tuesday: and it's good to be back in the kitchen. After a long weekend with 2 of my old roommates from NY in town, it was good to detox for a few days and get back to some home-cooking. (Highlights of that weekend at the end of this post). I started the week off with some later than usual nights at work, but still got back in time tonight to cram in a run - 3 miles up the beach and down Belmont pier during sunset (really man). But it's April and it has yet to really warm up here, and it's still a little chilly at night... so a nice dish of roasted chicken and potatoes can still give a house that nice warm glow.

I must admit, I knew as soon as I started tonight that most of what I was making wasn't going to make it to the plate. That run made me hungry. So I started off just boiling some baby broccoli sprouts.

Shocked em with cold water when they were cooked - and seriously you don't have to do ANYthing to organic baby broccoli. It's kinda sweet and green and just straight up good with nothing on it. So I couldn't stop picking at it while the fingerling potatoes were roasting in the oven and the chicken was defrosting under the faucet. Hence, tonight's pics are more about the product and the process than the plating.

Halfway through I put a little soy sauce and lemon on the broccoli which turned out to be an interesting combo - kinda salty and tangy and tart all at the same time.

Chicken seared on the range and then stuck into the oven - unfortunately I think I over cooked the chicken a bit tonight - it can get a little tricky when it's coming straight from the freezer.

Flavor though, was still good and crispy.

And how bout dem roasted fingaling budayduhs. Fuggedaboutit! Roasted quite nicely, a little oil, vinegar, garlic/salt/pepper marinade. Sprinkled with a little extra salt at the finish. Can't go wrong there.

And (jeez I really had an appetite tonight) last minute, I put a fresh salad on the roster at clean up. Sometimes, when I get that tangy dressing just right, damn it's so good.

So let's see, a quarter chicken, a bushel of baby broccoli, roasted potatoes, salad, and I still have leftovers for lunch. But it's all good stuff, and I'm still training for the Ragnar Relay (week and a half from now, yikes) so I'm working it off.

Speaking of working it off - some highlights from this weekend:

- biking in Venice, jamming with a blues band on Venice Beach (me on drums)

- Father's Office lunch, then hiking at Runyon Canyon (not sure I'd recommend a hike with a belly full of burger, but like I said, workin it off...)

- Drift Car (Formula D) racing in downtown Long Beach - absolutely insane. These guys drive with a death wish, burning rubber and fishtailing along the entire track, engines screaming!! Nice precursor to Formula 1 w/ Danica Patrick coming up this weekend

- And last but not least: The Light Beer Blind Taste Test Challenge. Now, it's no secret I've drank my fair share of crappy light beer over the years. Being such a connoisseur, I bet my friends that I could identify through a blind taste test, Bud Light, Coors Light, and Miller Light. EASY. Well it's not as easy as I thought! I got all three wrong and they each got 1 correct (they both identified the Miller - dumb luck). They're really all closer in taste than I thought - I think we just learned a little something about the power of persuasion and advertising. Although I still think I can tell the difference.

Yeah, well, dinner was on me that night.