Fish Tacos

First night on vacation on South Padre Island, TX in a lovely condo with a big kitchen. What's for dinner? Fish tacos. With strawberry daiquiris while you wait.

Chose a recipe from The Quick Recipe (from The Best Recipe series, on which I very often, and successfully, rely) with some modifications due to local availability. A tricky bit about cooking away from home is unreliable market selections - and in this condo's case - unreliable kitchen selection! Clearly the "fully stocked kitchen", as advertised on the rental website, is by opinion only. More helpful than not to any kitchen would be a functional can opener, dishwasher detergent, and more than one pan. Dare I go so far as to desire such luxury items as palatable tap water, and a blender that not only looks nice on the counter, but actually turns on? Maybe too far. Nonetheless, I was glad to have brought my own knives.

By the way, how does one identify local tap water sources?

The local I.G.A. "Blue Marlin" shopping mart was also limited. Aside from the single selection of Horizon organic milk, it's doubtful there was a single organic item in the entire store. A snobby complaint, I suppose. Much more unusual for an island supermarket was the two-foot-wide seafood counter with absolutely nothing fresh. But frozen mahi-mahi worked just fine. Actually, considering I've never deep fried anything before, these deep fried fish tacos came out fairly well.

Thawed the fish in some warm water, sliced them into just under corn-tortilla sized strips, and then breaded them in an eye-balled mixture of flour, cumin, ground New Mexico chili, fresh lime juice and maybe half a cup of Budweiser. The beer is a nice touch because then you get to drink the rest of the case with dinner.

More like dunked, really, than breaded. These gooey strips are then fried in 4 cups of vegetable oil, and then removed and drained before serving fresh onto cumin-mayonnaise-smothered warm corn tortillas.

Mmmm.

Next time I'm hoping the fish strips wont stick so to the bottom of the pan. Having a non-stick pan will help, I'm sure. Some fresh pico de gallo would be great with these, as would fresh-made corn tortillas, if possible. But really, as long as you have lots of fresh lime to squeeze over everything, fresh fried fish tacos are gonna be great.

Assuming you like fish.

watch out!