Fishing for Tacos!!! Part 3 (Tostadas de Pescado)

Just a few weeks ago I found myself washed over with a craving I don't normally get. With some corn tortillas laying around with seemingly no purpose other than expiring, I sprouted an idea. Fish tacos! Well according to my girlfriend Selene, these are not actually tacos that I'm making but tostadas. I trust her as she is a Mexican immigrant and has introduced me to some of the most authentic Mexican cuisine NY has to offer.

Well with this craving to fill those lonely corn tortillas I grabbed my tackle, a container of grubs, and promptly hit the water. Successful in my quest, I caught many of my target fish Bluegill including a surprise pickerel. I kept two bluegill for the tacos which should be enough as it is only me tonight.

I excitedly brought these fish home, working out what my steps are the whole way. 20 minutes back home seemed to take almost an hour. When I finally made it, I rest the fish on my filet board and stropped my filet knife. Cleaning these bluegill was not much of a challenge in this case because they were a decent size. Although I did have one problem, when I cut into these fish I picked up a strong muddy aroma.

Remembering a trick I learned over the years I broke out the milk, well in this case half and half. If you let the filets sit in milk any fishy or muddy flavor attaches to the fat. I let this sit for 5-6 hours although 12 hours is ideal. I cut the time because I wanted them tacos tonight, I mean tostadas.

This all works out ok because in the meantime I can get cleaned up then start chopping things.

Celery, onions, and garlic.

Escarole.

Who could forget the tomatoes! lol if you notice the spoon in the back, yes detectives, I almost forgot.

Now If you havn't noticed by now I am not following the rules of any cookbook or recipe, I never really do that. I will want a food and I will go around the grocery store looking for things to try out. In that way I rarely replicate even the most delicious meals. I feel like there is a level of beauty in each of my meals being as unique as a snowflake.

I preheat the pan and slapped the butter upon it, I always enjoy that sizzle. to get things started I lightly salted the butter and threw in the garlic, letting that flavor infuse into the butter. Only moments later I add the onions and celery. I let those cook until they are a caramel brown color. to finish this off I add a drop more butter and feed in the escarole. The escarole does not take long to cook, once they start to wilt its time to come of the pan and we could start chopping the tomatoes, err, cooking the meat.

The filets now taken out of the half and half and dried were just waiting for a nice hot buttery pan to lay on. So I preheat the pan to fulfill this dream I imagine these filets were having. I like to think I made them jump for joy after I sizzled the butter and added cayenne pepper, cumin, and a touch of sage. I let that infuse into the butter, this doesnt take long. The color of the spices are quickly browning, so the filets were laid on quickly. An outcry of sizzling as the filets hit the pan, not a moment too soon. 60 seconds on each side did the trick.

In the mist of cooking the meat I was also putting a crisp on those corn tortillas, in butter of coarse.

This leaves me with 2 more things to do, whip out the sour cream and beechwood smoked cheddar.

I assembled these tostadas with pride and immense hunger. It was not until the second one I was able to put one together for a picture. The first one looked fine for a picture, the only problem was it disappearing.

From aging tortillas to fishing and finally making it to tostadas de pascado, my day was filled as was my stomach. It will be some time before I eat any sort of bread as I usually keep it out of my diet. But for now I'm inhaling these things.

Thank you for reading!
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Special thanks to Selene Hive account@spuentecful (here on steemit, although not very active) for being an awesome girlfriend and helping me with this post!