A One Food Guy Favorite - Fish Tacos!

I think I've made it pretty clear that I love sushi, but I also love Mexican food, specifically tacos! I could tell you about the time J and I were in Mexico and had the most amazing tacos al pastor at this little place in Playa del Carmen called "Tacos" or I could tell you about this small restaurant in Waltham, MA called Taqueria Mexico that serves really great tacos. I could tell you about this place in Framingham, MA called Acapulcos that has outstanding tacos al pastor and even better fish tacos or I could tell you about The Paramount in Boston and The Cottage in Wellesley, both serving great fish tacos. But I'm not going to tell you about any of them; I'm going to tell you about the fish tacos that I made.

My fish tacos consisted of a nice fresh cod fillet sliced up into one inch strips, seasoned with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, cooked on a cast iron grill pan and served in fresh corn tortillas that I warmed in the oven. I made some pico de gallo with diced tomato, jalapeno, red onion, lime juice, salt, and pepper and some aji verde to serve on top of the fish with some shredded cabbage and cilantro. The aji verde was super hot but extremely fresh tasting and perfect with the fish.

I plated the tacos with yellow rice and chipotle black beans. To make the beans I sauteed some red onion and garlic in olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper, and then added in a can of black beans with four chipotle peppers from a can with the adobo sauce. I cooked the mixture over medium low heat for about five minutes and added in some chopped cilantro at the end.

These were great tacos; J said she thought they were even better than the ones we get at Acapulcos! This was about as spicy a meal as any that has come out of my kitchen. The pico was spicy, the aji verde very spicy, and the black beans, spicy. So to that I say, if you can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen!

Empanadas de Chapulines

If you use a translator to translate chapulines, you may get no results (chapuline is an Aztec word, used only in Mexico.) If, however, you look up chapulines on Wikipedia, you'll learn that chapulines are grasshoppers . You'll learn that they only come from certain parts of Mexico, most commonly the Oaxacan city and state, and that they are only collected at certain times of the year. I'd get my fill of chapulines on Saturday night at one of my favorite Mexican restaurants.

This past weekend J and I went to dinner at Tu y Yo with our friends MJ and John. This restaurant calls itself an authentic Mexican restaurant making family recipes from the past 100 years. I do want to tell you how great the food and drink is here, but this post is about something, we'll say unusual, that's on the menu - empanadas de chapulines. Yes, grasshopper empanadas.

I wish I had a better picture to share but all I had was my Q. That and I'm still not comfortable taking pictures of my food in a restaurant, not to mention J hates the attention that she thinks it draws to our table. Don't worry, I'd never use the flash! So in lieu of a good picture, I'll tell you that the empanada was soft and doughy, maybe slightly undercooked. The green sauce on the side is an avocado sauce, I think. The sauce was very mild, not contributing much to the flavor experience of the empanada, and an experience it certainly was.

J wanted nothing to do with the chapulines, neither did our friend MJ. MJ's husband John, however, was up for the experience. I took my first bite and noted the very earthy flavors of the chapulines. The empanada dough was pretty tasty, the chapulines, like nothing I've tasted before. I could see all the little legs of the insect inside the dough, a deep, dark reddish brown. When asked by others what it tasted like, I replied, "I guess it tastes like what I'd expect a bug to taste like." It wasn't bad at all, but there was nothing in it that I recognized. There were no flavors bursting out from within the doughy exterior that said, "Wow! This is great," or "Ecchh, this is gross."

I'm glad I tried them. I'm always willing to try something new with the hope that I'll find a new favorite food. Let's just say that next time I'm at Tu y Yo, I'll skip the grasshopper and go for the frog legs instead, listed under seafood by the way.

Tu y Yo
858 Broadway
Somerville, MA 02144
Ph (617) 623-5411
http://tuyyomexicanfonda.com/

Visit Wikipedia for a nice picture of the chapulines.