Fish Tacos with Guacamole

Chef John Guinivere Fish tacos with Guacamole Okay I’m going to start my Enchilada Fish tacos and once again you don’t want to use an expensive fish, it’s just not right if you’re going to do a buttered fish, fish chips, sea bass would probably a sin, you don’t want to do that. And of course you want to give a nice smell. If you’re at the butcher shop or at the supermarket I always ask them to put on a newspaper and I can smell it, if they do smell I won’t even take it. This also has some bones in it so what I usually do is I rub my hand over the fish and you can see the angle of the bones if I was one out you can tell they’re going this way. So I’ll take my knife and I try in it. I could feel that I’ve hit a bone right there so I’ll back off till I no longer can feel the bone and check the rest of it, and I cut it in strips. If you want to marinade this a little bit ahead of time, you can I wouldn’t do it for more than say 15 or 20 minutes it will dry out the fish especially if you use salt and that kind of stuff. I’m going to season this and once again I will use some of my taco seasoning and we’ll also put this in the batter and we’ll just add some more garlic because you just can’t have too much garlic. Now, this time I’m going to mince the garlic instead of chopping it. It has a chance to flavor the fish. And one of the ways I mince is sort of funny but I think a lot of chef do this is use actually the back side of your knife. And you crush it it’s like you're slicing it but you just keep mashing it and it will give a nice smash garlic. Go over anything I missed and then a little bit of chopping. The flavor cook the fish and let this sit for a minute. I use a little bit of cornstarch to give it the crispiness and small taco seasonings in there. What you’re looking for is thick enough to cover the fish but you won't play though. It’s best just to keep adding the water until you get the consistency you want, that way you don’t have to add more flour or cornstarch back in. It’s just a little easier this way and I seasoned the batter, it’s one of the reasons a lot of people like my fish taco so much. Now, I already hear the oil is ready and I usually jut put all the fish I want to cook right into the batter and then I put batter over the pan then I could drip this much and make this much of a mess. Now, if you have a smaller stove than this you might want to do slowly, add the fish fillet because once you put the fish in it’s going to cool down the oil. So you want to keep the temperature of the oil going and that way we won’t get soggy batter, it would be nice if crunchy. And you can also make a bunch of this ahead of time I always do this for parties and I put in on a paper towel and a plate throw it in the oven a couple of 100 degrees, 200 degrees. It will stay warm and crisp and we’re going to put Guacamole and stuff and many ways so we’re not really that worried about it getting too dried out. Now for my Guacamole I will use this bowl. I don’t know if this is authentic but I swear I make my Guacamole. Put my plate ready and good, the color comes red after this. One of the tricks was a couple of tricks with avocados. One being that if you know you need one avocado buy two because you’ll never know the one inside is going to be black or brown. And the other hint is if you push right down at the bottom of the – it says ripe one here let’s say it didn’t, if you push right there you should be able to feel it’s soft and you can swear feel that way down there. And that’s just the right avocado texture for Guacamole. You want nice and soft, you want to be able to do something. Usually when an avocado is on sale I buy too soft ones, too medium and too really hard and then I have avocados for four, five days. We have skin left and a potato masher works quite well to get your avocados going. You just mash this then everything else come together really fast. The fish is getting pretty dark and close. Let’s give it a one second on other side and then I’ll put those out to drain and I can trim my oil off down because definitely we have enough heat in there to get through that. And I will use a small piece of grill. You don’t want to use too much garlic in this because frankly the heat of the garlic will come out on the Guacamole and it won't be as tasty. I will add few red onions, and I will take that fish out right now it’s done. Another nice thing is about putting the seasoning in there it gives more of a color just sort of nice orangy great color, another look to it. Definitely don’t use Dover sole or any of the fish that is really soft flounder definitely do not use flounder because you’ll have a big mess on your hands. It’s really fine dice. One of the most important flavors in Guacamole is your salt. There’s one thing I've noticed that if I forget the salt in there it sounds like bread. I put dice tomatoes in mine. What also helps stretch the Guacamole is a little bit of sour cream and today I’m using light sour cream. I'm also going to use some of it for our dessert and in the end I figure you're not going sugar-free so make sure that it’s lower in fat. I'm going to have some lemon juice in there and one trick with lemons is if you squeeze it over your fingers you can catch the seeds. And don’t use too much of lemon juice, if you ever get the package Guacamole at the store they always just put ton of lemon juice and it is almost distracting it’s just too much lemon juice. And a little salt and some pepper, and it’s really all we need at the Guacamole. So now that we got all our stuff and potatoes, the only thing I’m going to also do is really thin slice cabbage. You could use a shredded cabbage they have in the bags, it’s great. I’ll put the chips from tortillas and of course put the tortillas right on the burner. It’s easy quick way to heat them up. It works on the electric burner but sometimes it stick. You could also just do a little pan if you wanted to. You just keep flipping that way it get a nice and hot without any bubble up like just to rewarm. You use flour tortillas of course and actually pita breads would be good. We use fresh pita bread and use that pockets. Well what I usually do for a party is I’ll just put everything out and just heat the tortillas and throw on their base plate where they can put on whatever they want, a hot sauce or whatever condiments you want to put out on Guacamole. A little cabbage, a little crunch in there. It seems funny but just a little bit more salt. Just your salt to each one. If you want to get fancy put a little garnish. Here are your fish tacos.