Fish Tacos

Fish Tacos are an amazing thing. There’s so much going on with them at once; so many contrasting textures and flavors are being combined in the same moment. It also seems like everyone who has ever had a fish taco has what they consider to be the best way to make them, as well as the best topping for them. So, in keeping with that tradition, Nate and I got together one night and made some Epic Fish Tacos.

There’s a little restaurant here in town that serves all types of Mexican food, almost like a Baja Fresh but not quite. Their fish tacos are topped with a jicama radish slaw, which was honestly the first good use I’ve seen for jicama. Since both Nate and I are quite fond of this slaw, we set out to make a similar topping for our fish tacos.

We began with this recipe from food.com and edited it to better suit our needs. We simplified the original recipe, paring it down the what we felt the essential elements were. Our modified version is below.

Jicama Radish Slaw
3 cups shredded green cabbage
5 shredded radishes
1 1/2 shredded cups jicama
1 tsp cayenne pepper (this may be a bit much for some)
1/2 tsp cumin
2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 1/2 tbsp cilantro
About 1 tbsp lime juice
1/3 cup mayo
1/3 cup sour cream

We used the coarse side of a box grater to shred the cabbage, radishes and jicama and then combined all ingredients in a large bowl.

Once we had the slaw finished, we turned our attention to the fish. We had decided to use two types of fish in order to compare which was better: cod or tilapia.

We cut the fish into chunks, breaded them with a simple egg wash and panko bread crumbs. We used a 50/50 blend of unseasoned panko and chipotle panko bread crumbs. Once the fish was breaded, we fried the pieces until golden brown.

Once the fish was fried we put some pieces of fish on a corn tortilla, spooned some slaw on top, and dug in. We also compared the two types of fish. We felt that the cod was better suited for the tacos than the tilapia. The tilapia didn’t have the same depth of flavor that the cod did, and the flavor that the tilapia had didn’t seem to go with the rest of the flavors in the dish as well as the cod did. No matter which fish we were eating though, the salty crunch of the fish, mixed with the creamy, sweet, earthiness of the slaw made this a truly epic meal.

-Dave