I have this friend who is obsessed with tacos. OBSESSED. He can and does eat tacos for every meal. And he tells me about it all the time. I literally get daily updates telling me he ate tacos again for lunch. And then dinner. Or he might tell me that he was forced to eat Mexican (tacos) for lunch because everyone at work wanted to get Mexican. Sometimes he will diverge from tacos and eat a burrito.
I find his obsession with tacos weird. I mean I like food just as much as the next person, if not more, but I cannot eat the same thing morning, noon and night every day. I will admit that I have been eating more tacos recently. A lot more. And I find I’m annoyed with myself because every time I eat tacos I think about my taco-obsessed friend. And then I share a picture of the tacos I ate. And then he thinks we are soul mates because we both eat tacos.
Here’s another thing that’s weird. I hate cabbage. I do not typically eat coleslaw or any other form of raw cabbage (or cooked for that matter). But when it comes to tacos I make an exception because I think that cabbage tastes exceptional with certain tacos. Like Thai chicken tacos. And fish tacos. (Incidentally, I also like cole slaw on a good BBQ pulled pork sandwich.)
So a few weeks back I was going through this food phase where I was only eating certain things and one of the things I was trying to eat more of was salmon. But what I ended up doing was buying a huge thing of salmon from Costco, making one recipe that I didn’t really love and throwing the rest of the salmon in the freezer for another time. This week I have resurrected that salmon.
The first night I had salmon was a massive fail. I made a weird taco with leftover corn risotto, blackened salmon and chipotle mayo. It was not a combination I cared to repeat. But I did like the idea of a salmon taco. I had more tortillas to use, some avocados laying around and had forgotten about the leftover shredded cabbage from my Thai chicken tacos. Once I realized I had all the fixins for a good fish taco I was sold. I stopped at Trader Joe’s briefly to get some cilantro and other ingredients I plan to use within the next few days.
It turns out my taco obsessed friend isn’t totally off his rocker. Tacos are GOOD. They are also relatively easy to make. I grilled the salmon in a foil packet, heated up some corn tortillas (should have grilled them – drat!) and tossed in some avocado and chipotle lime mayo (which was may mixed with chipotle powder and lime juice) and — voila! A damn good taco was born.
ingredients.
- fresh salmon
- avocado, diced
- shredded cabbage,
- chipotle lime mayo (or any other creamy sauce like cilantro lime mayo)
- cilantro
directions.
- Heat your grill. Place raw salmon in some tin foil, season with salt and pepper (or whatever seasoning floats your boat) and fold the edges up and over to secure the package. Place the foil packet on the grill and heat for 4 to 6 minutes, or more, depending on the amount and thickness of salmon. Yesterday 5 minutes was too little and today 6 minutes was too much. The foil was thicker today so perhaps I didn’t heat my grill enough the day before.
- Meanwhile, gather your other ingredients and heat your corn tortillas. I did this in a pan on the stove over medium heat flipping the tortillas over and over until desired doneness. They get kind of crispy and shrink. You can probably do this on the grill but be careful. I’ve burned bacon in less than one minute on the grill.
- Assemble the tacos. I put the salmon on top of the tortillas and then piled with cabbage, avocado, mayo and cilantro. Eat immediately.
I don’t want to tell my taco obsessed friend this, but I will likely have tacos again tomorrow. Shhhhh! Three days in a row. I do have more salmon in the freezer, a few more tacos and plenty of cabbage to use. He would be proud, eh?
Recipe rating:
Food Snob 