Classic Ensenada Fish Tacos

Baja fish tacos they're like an icon of the Mexican kitchen just think about it it's a soft corn tortilla that golden crunchy battered fish few slivers of cabbage and that special crema that they always spoon on it you know I've got a perfect salsa to go with that what's that spicy arbol chili salsa that sounds pretty good to me I'm gonna get together all the stuff for the fish you make this sauce great so onto the main ingredient the arbol chilies now we've got about an ounce of arbol chilies here that we want to take the stems off of now that these are all stemmed we're gonna dry toast them we want them to be very aromatic now these are going into the blender over here in there as well is going to go some garlic that we've roasted in their skins for about 15 minutes here and the final ingredient water about 3/4 of a cup of you honors us a little bit of salt you want to blend this hill it's about a coarse puree Wow look at you let's just try please thank you sure they moved for the faint of heart but I think it'll go really good with those fish tacos now the history of the Baja fish taco is kind of interesting most people trace it back to an influx of Japanese immigrants that came at the beginning of the 20th century so the Baja fish taco is sort of tempura battered but of course the Japanese had learned to make their tempura from the Portuguese centuries ago when they had visited Japan and this well that's kind of different than all of that in fact it's a very very flavorful batter and the first thing that you do is to start with a couple of big cloves of garlic I'm going to crush them to get their papery skins off I'm going to chop it finely and now I'm going to make this chopped garlic into a paste by sprinkling it with salt and then work it back and forth on the cutting board to make that garlic paste and then I'm going to add to that a little bit of Mexican oregano some black pepper now here's where it gets kind of interesting most of the batters that I came across in Baja always had a little bit of chicken bullion either the powdered kind or this chicken base so I'm going to put that in there a little yellow mustard about a tablespoon of that's going to go into the next year a baking powder about a teaspoon of that and now we're down to the liquid and the flour now you could make it with just water and a lot of people in Baja do make their batter with water or you could use sparkling water like seltzer water where you could use beer which is what I'm going to use today because I think it adds a really flavorful element and it makes a really crispy light coating on the outside of that so I'm going to put about a cup full of the beer into the bowl and then whisk all of that together and finally its equal parts of flour and liquid ma he's one of my favorite fish and that's what I've got to work with today so I'm going to cut this into half-inch pieces here and each one now when I fry fish at home if it's nice weather I like to do it outside now I've got vegetable oil heated to a little over 360 degrees my pieces of fish here I'm going to dip them into the batter that I made coating them completely pick them up by an edge and then just drop them into the hot oil you know and it wouldn't be about ha fish taco without some fresh very thinly sliced cabbage over the top of it that's exquisite

Channel: Rick Bayless

Views: 82,266

Rating: 4.907455 out of 5

Keywords: Rick Bayless (Chef), Rick Bayless fish tacos, Baja fish tacos, tacos, Mexico One Plate at a Time, Taco (Dish), Food (TV Genre), recipe, Cooking, Fish, Ensenada (City/Town/Village)

Id: vMx0_JW6HIU

Length: 5min 25sec (325 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 03 2015