Fish tacos

A fish taco just sounded weird to me. But believe me, it is not weird. It is actually more delicious than any other type of taco I've ever had, and that is saying a lot because I live in a taco-oriented culture, where meat tacos are the norm.

The halibut fish mixture was prepared previously for the halibut masa empanadas and described down there ☟☟ two posts prior to this. The corn tortillas are from the same batch of seasoned masa, this time pressed more thinly as proper corn tortillas and fried completely which translates to about 45 seconds on each side on moderately high heat. 

Man, if I knew one halibut steak would go this far I'd have cut it in half. It is quite incredible altogether. There is already diced onions in the mixture along with uncooked tomato and uncooked cucumber. Reheating the mixture even gently for a mere 30 seconds cooks those raw ingredients if ever so slightly. Recombined with more fresh raw tomato and lettuce moderates the absurdly overly-seasoned halibut. It is still unidentifiable as halibut, but no less delicious. I am amazed. 

Truth in advertising laws require me to report that the taco photographed below is held together with two toothpicks. The toothpicks were cloned out in Photoshop. Your floppy taco will not be this cooperative. You'll have to keep holding it. We could deep-fry the tortilla into this shape for a crispy shell, or just use commercial shells, but I did not want to do that. We can also use flour tortillas instead of corn tortillas, it's all good, and I have enough of this brilliant halibut mixture still chilling so you might not have seen the end of this yet. 

Two batches of beans were prepared. The first batch was small. The beans were soaked overnight then boiled the next day in water with baking soda added. They lost their color, they broke apart, they slipped out of their skins and looked awful, like maggots in a pile of dark wet fuzzy cocoons. They were delicious with salt and pepper. I ate them while I prepared another small batch using a pressure pot. 

The second batch cooked for 30 minutes on first-level pressure in seasoned water. These are more firm and equally delicious with the seasoning cooked into them by force. They are drizzled with olive oil on the plate, mostly for photography purposes. It is a trick that we food stylists types do that we learned from creative cooks. Lidia Bastianich tells us, "It makes the food smile." Then she smiles charmingly.