Late dinner times
We tend to eat dinner later around here. We feel on top of our game if we are sitting down around 7pm, though often it is ootching to closer to 7:30 when we actually sit down. And then there are some days where we sit down even later. Take last night, for instance. We finally had the food ready to serve at 8:30, which is late even for us. But I think the reason was totally worth it.
I had planned a slightly more elaborate meal because it was a weekend, and I figured we had time to fix it. The trouble was, we both misjudged exactly how long it was going to take, and got a little later start than we had planned. (Or more precisely, if we had done any sort of planning at all, we might have realized we needed to start earlier.)
And what was this dish that took us so much longer to make than expected? It was out of my new cookbook that I bought at the Mexican Museum last week, The Best Mexican Recipes by America's Test Kitchen, and the dish I chose to begin with was Baja Fish Tacos with Pickled Onion and Cabbage.
The recipe wasn't difficult, just a little bit time consuming, between making the corn tortillas and coating and frying the fish. The fish was really the slow part. Based on one recipe, I'm impressed with the book so far. I've made my own tortillas more than a few times now, but have never been terribly pleased with the results, and it always seemed like a fussier-than-necessary process. Well, the directions for making corn tortillas in this book were the best that I've come across. As a result, after a few practice tortillas, I had no trouble successfully making them... nor with them turning out as I expected. I also wasn't sure that the pickled onions and cabbage, which was kind of like a slaw, would be terribly popular with the masses, but I was wrong. People were serving themselves some just eat by itself. Next time, I won't be quite so conservative with the jalepeno, as I couldn't taste it at all after it had sat in the brine for a while.
We'll definitely make this again, but perhaps we'll start a wee bit earlier.
I had planned a slightly more elaborate meal because it was a weekend, and I figured we had time to fix it. The trouble was, we both misjudged exactly how long it was going to take, and got a little later start than we had planned. (Or more precisely, if we had done any sort of planning at all, we might have realized we needed to start earlier.)
And what was this dish that took us so much longer to make than expected? It was out of my new cookbook that I bought at the Mexican Museum last week, The Best Mexican Recipes by America's Test Kitchen, and the dish I chose to begin with was Baja Fish Tacos with Pickled Onion and Cabbage.
The recipe wasn't difficult, just a little bit time consuming, between making the corn tortillas and coating and frying the fish. The fish was really the slow part. Based on one recipe, I'm impressed with the book so far. I've made my own tortillas more than a few times now, but have never been terribly pleased with the results, and it always seemed like a fussier-than-necessary process. Well, the directions for making corn tortillas in this book were the best that I've come across. As a result, after a few practice tortillas, I had no trouble successfully making them... nor with them turning out as I expected. I also wasn't sure that the pickled onions and cabbage, which was kind of like a slaw, would be terribly popular with the masses, but I was wrong. People were serving themselves some just eat by itself. Next time, I won't be quite so conservative with the jalepeno, as I couldn't taste it at all after it had sat in the brine for a while.
We'll definitely make this again, but perhaps we'll start a wee bit earlier.
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