Tilapia Ceviche

I don't usually test recipes before I serve them to company. There are just way too many recipes I want to try, and my friends don't like to venture across the Potomac that often. (Moving to Northern Virginia is D.C.'s equivalent of moving to Brooklyn from Manhattan.) But even though I don't test recipes, I try to stick to ones that I feel relatively confident making. So I was a little nervous when Nic said he wanted to make ceviche for the friends we were having over Saturday night.

We've both eaten a lot of ceviche, but I had never made anything like it at home before. Now that I have, I think I will be serving it a lot more. It is really easy to throw together, most of the time it is just sitting in the refrigerator. Ceviche is the perfect appetizer because it can be prepared well ahead of time and dished out right before serving, leaving you free to pull together the rest of your meal (which if you're like me, is essential, since I normally underestimate how long this takes by at least 45 minutes).


The most important part of the ceviche I think is getting a very fresh fish. I sent Nic to the Whole Foods fish counter to request their freshest fish, and that is how we ended up with the tilapia. The type of citrus that you use can also really alter the flavor of the ceviche. This time we used mostly lemon (because that was cheapest), but I think it would be interesting to try a lime and grapefruit combination. I'm looking forward to trying other combinations of fish, citrus, and other flavors soon.

Tilapia Ceviche
10 servings

Ingredients:
1 lb. fresh tilapia filets, cut into 1/4 inch slices
juice of 9 large lemons
juice of 3 limes
juice of 1 orange
1 medium red onion, sliced thinly
1 jalapeno, seeds removed and finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
handful of fresh cilantro
1 tbs. olive oil
salt
1 to 2 avocados, chopped
3 green onions, green parts chopped (optional)

Directions:
-Place tilapia, citrus juice, onion, jalapeno, garlic and cilantro in a glass bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit in the refrigerator for 6 to 7 hours. When the tilapia is "cooked" it will be opaque and will flake fairly easily. Most of the citrus will be absorbed.
-Take the tilapia out of the bowl and shred it into small pieces. In a clean bowl, mix together the tilapia, olive, oil and salt to taste.
-Take the onion, jalapeno, garlic and cilantro, out of the bowl and roughly chop together.
-Divide onion mixture between 10 small dishes. Top onion mixture with tilapia ceviche, divided evenly between dishes. Garnish with a generous amount of avocado and some green onion.
-Serve immediately.

Coconut Salmon w/ Sweet & Sour Sauce

Here was my train of thought this morning when I was peering into my freezer trying to decide what to defrost for dinner: Thursday night. What am I doing? Run. Movie? No, VP debate is on. Palin. Alaska. Salmon. Double Musky Coconut Salmon! MMMMM.



I have only eaten at the Double Musky Inn in Girdwood, Alaska twice but it might be one of my top 5 favorite restaurants. But we'll have to wait and see when I sit down to write that list. The restaurant is billed as "Alaska's Mountain Cajun Cuisine." Some lady on the Food Network even said they have the best steak in America. I'm not much of a steak connoisseur, but I do know that their coconut salmon served with sweet and sour sauce is worth the trip to Alaska for a chance to eat.

Lucky for us in the lower 48, the owners of the Double Musky, Bob and Deanna Persons, published a cookbook, which I happened to pick up and you can get on their Web site. I don't own a lot of cookbooks--just counted, I have five and that's if you count a spice companion--but this one is great. I am not an expert on their menu, but it looks like they have recipes for pretty much everything they serve. (Funny side note, Sen. Ted Stevens wrote the foreword. He also seems to be a fan of the coconut salmon.)

I am pleased to report that the homemade coconut salmon is just as good as I remember the restaurant version being. Success! It was so good in fact that I didn't get any pretty pictures of it before we gobbled it all down. The recipe SPECIFICALLY says "it is best eaten right out of the fryer." We took that quite literally. Technically it is supposed to be an appetizer, so if you feel guilty eating fried fish with coconut all over it as your main course go ahead and serve it that way. I felt no such remorse. Although some green onion mashed potatoes did complement it nicely.

(Where did this salmon come from, you might be asking. I know, I told you in the Worst Kitchen Moments post that all my halibut and salmon went bad. But luckily Nic's dad had kept his own 100 lbs. of the fish in Texas, and he was kind enough to bring us some on his last trip to D.C.)



I halved both the beer batter and the sweet and sour sauce recipe. It was just the right amount of sauce, but it was still more than enough batter for the amount of salmon we made (1/2 fillet), which could serve 4-6 as an appetizer or 2-3 for dinner.

Coconut Salmon w/ Sweet & Sour Sauce
From The Double Musky Inn Cookbook
Ingredients:
For beer batter
1 cup beer
2 tbs. vegetable oil
2 eggs
3/4 tsp. salt
pinch pepper
1 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
3/4 cup water
2 3/4 cups flour

For sweet and sour sauce
1 1/2 cups grape jelly
1/2 cup Dijon mustard
1/2 tbs. horseradish

For coconut salmon
salmon
flour
beer batter
shredded sweetened coconut
oil for deep frying

Directions:
-Mix together beer, vegetable oil, egg, salt, pepper, water, and garlic powder. Add the flour little by little until it is the desired consistency. You can make this batter ahead of time and refrigerate it until you are ready to make the salmon.
-In a saucepan on low heat, warm up the jelly until it is smooth and all the clumps are gone. Then add mustard and horseradish. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Again, this can be made early and refrigerated.
-Remove the skin from the salmon. Cut the salmon into chunks about 1/2 inch thick. The other dimensions don't matter as much, but they are supposed to be finger dipping food.
-Coat the salmon pieces with flour, then beer batter, then coconut. Make sure you get plenty of coconut on there and pat it down so that it sticks.
-Heat 3 inches of oil in a deep pan to 375 degrees. (I throw in a little piece of bread and see if it sizzles in place of a nifty oil thermometer.) Fry the salmon until the coconut turns golden brown. This cooks pretty fast so keep an eye on it!
-Drain on paper towels. Eat immediately.

I'm not sure if they don't taste as good once they cool. I didn't wait to find out.

Fish Tacos w/ Mango Salsa

Fish tacos are my absolute favorite Mexican, well Mexican-American, food. They are so light and fresh, and they don't leave you with that horrible/wonderful brick-in-your stomach feeling you get when you eat other Mexican food. I had them for the first time while I was visiting my aunt in California when I was in middle school. Fish tacos were pretty hard to find on the east coast back then, but now you can get them at Baja Fresh or my favorite in D.C.--Taqueria Nacionale. This is a little recipe for fish tacos I cooked up last night. They were so good, I ate the leftovers for breakfast this morning while I was writing this post. The spicy, flaky fish tasted awesome with the cool, creamy cabbage salad and the hot and sweet mango salsa. And the fish cooks so fast that the whole meal can be thrown together in less than 20 minutes, especially if you enlist a second set of hands to prep the toppings while you cook the fish.

The family we stayed with in Alaska this summer showed us how to make this amazing blackened halibut after we caught a bunch. It is really simple and delicious and perfect for fish tacos. If you don't have halibut though, you can use a comparable white fish and cook it the same way.


Ingredients:
For mango salsa
1/2 large mango, diced
2 medium tomatoes, diced
1 jalapeno pepper, deseeded
2-3 sprigs cilantro
2 cloves garlic
a few spoonfuls of regular store-bought salsa
season to taste, I used:
salt/pepper
pinch paprika
pinch chili powder
pinch cayenne pepper
pinch cinnamon

For cabbage salad
bagged coleslaw mix (not premade coleslaw, just the shredded cabbage)
plain non-fat yogurt (I use Greek yogurt, but any plain yogurt will do)
low-fat mayonnaise
lemon
salt/pepper

For halibut
halibut
butter
cajun/blackening seasoning

taco shells (soft or hard)

Directions:
-Throw all of the salsa ingredients into a blender (or if you're lucky enough to have one, a food processor). Blend until smooth. (Makes about 2 cups of mango salsa.)
-Mix enough yogurt with the shredded cabbage just to keep it stuck together. Add a dollop of mayonnaise, lemon, salt and pepper to taste.
-Preheat skillet (cast iron works best) on medium-high. Fillet the fish about 1/2 inch thick, and cut into 2"X2" squares. Season both sides of each piece of fish with cajun seasoning. Melt a few tablespoons of butter in the skillet. Cook fish until first side is blackened. Flip and finish cooking. The fish is done when it flakes easily with a fork. Drain fish on paper towels.
-Assemble tacos!

An ongoing debate in our apartment: Is it salsa or hot sauce? Nic calls everything hot sauce, I say only tabasco-like products are hot sauce. Thoughts?