The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

fish

Trout tacos with spicy Oaxaca pasilla cream sauce

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We like to buy trout from the organic tianguis that comes to the Roma every two weeks. A vendor sells it whole and in filets. The trout isn’t available all the time, so when we buy it, it’s a treat.

In the past, I’ve poached the fish and served it with a salsa verde (one day I’m going to post all these recipes for you, I swear). But lately I’ve been bored with poaching. I said to Crayton, who is slowly coming around to eating seafood, what would you like to do with this fish? Usually when I ask him what he wants to eat, he says meatloaf. This time he said, Why not fish tacos?

The idea zapped me, because I’ve never actually made fish tacos before. Salad tacos, peanut butter tacos, roasted carrot and banh mi tacos, yes. Fish tacos no.

The dream fish taco… and the reality

My favorite kind of fish taco is deep-fried: nuggets of bland white fish, sheathed in beer batter, puffed up in hot oil and served with shredded cabbage and a spicy cream sauce. The cream sauce is kinda half tartar sauce, half salsa.

For our meal at home, I wanted to make something healthier while keeping the idea of that sauce intact. The fish, because I would not be marinating it, needed a little zing.

So I pan-fried my trout filets. I made a sauce using the Oaxacan chile pasilla (I am obsessed), garlic, yogurt and mayonnaise. The result, thrown together in 30 minutes, was exactly what I wanted it to be: a simple taco that felt hefty because of the cabbage, and that wowed you with its smoky-creaminess. My friend Liz came over for dinner and moaned when she bit into these. “What is the name of this chile?” she demanded.

If you don’t have Oaxacan pasillas, you could substitute morita or chipotle.

Trout tacos with spicy Oaxaca pasilla cream sauce
Serves 4 with a few side dishes

For the sauce (makes about 1/4 cup):
1 Oaxaca chile pasilla, or any other intensely smoky, spicy chile
1 clove garlic
2 tablespoons plain yogurt
1 tablespoon mayonnaise

For the fish:
12 ounces trout filets
Vegetable or olive oil (or oil of your choice)
Six to 8 corn tortillas
Salt
Pepper

Garnish:
Lime wedges
Shredded cabbage

Directions

It’s a good idea to make the sauce first, so the flavors mix while you’re preparing the rest of the dish. Using kitchen shears or a knife, make an incision in the chile and scrape out the seeds and veins. Don’t use your fingers — it’s better to use a small spoon or a butter knife. Cover chile in hot water and let hydrate until the skin has softened, about five to 10 minutes. While the chile rests, you can slice your cabbage and let it sit in cold water, so it stays fresh.

Once the chile is sufficiently softened, add it to a blender with the garlic and just a little (1 or 2 tablespoons) water. Blend until as smooth as possible. Don’t worry if you see pieces of chile — that’s okay. Scrape or pour mixture into a small bowl, and whisk in mayonnaise and yogurt. Taste for salt and add if necessary. Store sauce in fridge until ready to use.

Wash and pat dry the fish filets. Season with salt and pepper. To cook, drizzle about a tablespoon of oil in a nonstick skillet and heat to medium. Add the fish when the pan is hot. Cook until golden brown on both sides.

To serve tacos, take a fork and shred a little bit of fish into a warm corn tortilla. Top with a spritz of lime juice, a spoonful of salsa and the cabbage.

Improvised tilapia pibil

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My husband is not a fan of seafood. Usually when I tell people that, they say, “Anything? He doesn’t eat any seafood?” And I say, “No. Nothing.” And then they persist: “Not even shrimp?” And I say no, not even shrimp.

Slowly, slooowly, I’ve been trying to introduce fish, because of its health benefits. But it’s been hard to find a fish that’s not overly fishy-tasting. (And it pains me to say that, because I love fish that’s overly fishy tasting.) A while back when we lived in Texas, I asked him if he wouldn’t mind tasting some tilapia. He agreed, and so I baked it in parchment and drizzled on some olive oil and lemon juice.

To my shock, he actually ate the whole thing. And he didn’t grimace, which is what he usually does when he doesn’t like a certain food. (The funny part is that he doesn’t know he’s grimacing. It’s pretty cute.)

We haven’t eaten fish in awhile, so yesterday I bought a few tilapia filets and decided to cook them in Yucatecan pibil-style spices. Pibil comes from the Mayan word “pib,” which means “cooked in an earthen oven.” The term generally refers to meat that’s been marinated in a mix of achiote, sour orange juice, garlic and spices. It’s wrapped in banana leaves and baked — traditionally in an underground pit — on low heat, until the meat is falling-apart tender. Cochinita pibil is perhaps the most famous dish made this way.

The pibil spices aren’t hot, in terms of chile peppers. The marinade is a combination of subtle flavors, with a zesty kick from the sour orange juice. It’s also pretty easy to throw together. If you don’t have sour orange juice, you can use half white vinegar and half regular orange juice.

I’m calling this “improvised” tilapia pibil because I baked it in aluminum foil, not banana leaves. (Not because I eschew banana leaves — I just didn’t have any on hand.) It worked fine. I need to keep banana leaves in the freezer though, because they impart a certain aroma that you don’t get with regular old foil or parchment paper.

By the way, Crayton enjoyed this. He ate the whole thing, again, with no grimaces. So we’re tilapia 2 for 2.

Recipe below.
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A trip to La Nueva Viga, Mexico City’s main seafood market

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A few weeks ago as part an Eat Mexico tour, Jesica and I ventured out to La Nueva Viga, Mexico City’s biggest seafood market.

It’s also known simply as “La Viga,” which is confusing, because there’s another market in Mexico City — a smaller one — that sells seafood and is also called Mercado de La Viga. This Nueva Viga took its place.

I hadn’t been before, although I’d been to the Central de Abastos, which is directly adjacent to La Nueva Viga. The market sits a few streets over from the Central’s main fruit-and-vegetable complex, behind a long row of seafood empanada stands.

While the Central is a maze-like collection of tunnels and hallways, La Nueva Viga consists mostly of two long concrete rows with small booths carved out along the length. Shipments of seafood from all around Mexico and elsewhere are trucked in daily; El Universal says up to 2,000 tons a day. Buyers from restaurants and fondas around Mexico City flock there in the mornings to purchase their catch.

The market is open to the public, so if you want to buy even one piece of fish, you can bring a little cooler and do that. But get there early — a lot of the freshest stuff is gone by mid-day.

The great thing is that even if you’re only buying a half-pound of shrimp, the vendors are still really nice. They’ll explain where the shrimp came from and whether it was previously frozen, and any other different varieties they might carry.

It’s a fascinating, if smelly, place to visit. Slabs of fresh fish lie on ice, along with slippery pieces of octopus. Vendors troll about in white apron coats and rubber boots and yell the usual, “¿Qué le damos?” There is red snapper, bags of whole shrimp with their crispy heads still attached, crabs, frozen scallops, sole, and many other strange-looking ocean creatures that I didn’t know the names of.

In the center of the nearby parking lot, oblivious to the reeking-fish-guts smell, food vendors sell tacos and other snacks.

We visited on a cool, overcast day; I wouldn’t want to be near La Nueva Viga on a hot day. Thankfully, the fish itself, once we got up close, smelled of nothing. The pieces looked slick and wet and plump. I really wished I would’ve brought a little cooler, to take home some crab meat or huachinango. Or pulpo.

I’d highly recommend a visit there, if you’re looking for the best seafood the city has to offer.

Here are some pictures of the place. For more, check out this neat YouTube slide show. If you’ve been to La Nueva Viga and have any information you want to share, please do — couldn’t find much history on the place on the Internet. I’m especially interested in the history of the old La Viga, the seafood market that came before La Nueva.

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More Mexican Christmas dinner tales: bacalao

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Bacalao is the Spanish word for a slab of boneless, skinless dried salt cod. The filets — long, snowy looking things — pop up in all the Mexico City grocery stores and markets during Christmastime.

I had eaten fried bacalao a few times in Spain, but I’d never tried it the Mexican way, which combines tomatoes, onions, green olives, chiles and garlic to make a kind of fishy stew.

The idea of cooking with salted fish intrigued me, in a Laura Ingalls Wilder kind of way. (Remember how her family used to eat salt pork?) So I picked out a rather large, one-and-a-half pound piece at Mercado de la Merced a few weeks ago, and asked the vendor for cooking instructions.

She gave me a detailed list, which I wrote down in my moleskine. You can see them below, at the bottom of the page.

To check the recipe’s veracity, I flipped through Diana Kennedy and Rick Bayless, who currently comprise the bulk of my Mexican cooking library. Luckily, “Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen” had a recipe that mirrored the vendor’s instructions almost exactly. I decided I’d whip up a mixture of his dish and the market vendor’s.

Unfortunately, amid attending a friend’s posada and throwing my own tamalada, I didn’t plan very well. Bacalao must be de-salted before cooking, which means it has to sit in a dish of water for several hours. Once mine was sufficiently salt-free, I was up to my ears in cornhusks. I wasn’t ready to cook it, so I stuck it in the freezer for a few days and prayed.

Surprisingly, it turned out great. The fish was hearty and toothsome, but not tough. And the tomato-onion mixture was the perfect foil — light, spicy, and with a kick of saltiness from the olives. I added small red potatoes, too, although you can also serve it with rice. The dish looks complicated, but really, it’s not difficult at all. We’ve been eating the leftovers over the past few days and it only gets better with time.

I think this might be another new Christmas tradition, along with figgy pudding.

Recipe below.
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