Ensenada Seafood

about an hour and a half south of the San Diego Tijuana border surrounded by dramatic mountain ranges you'll find a beautiful town Ensenada a little cosmopolitan little industrial in a little 20th century it's located right on the Pacific Ocean and for me that's the town's main attraction the fishing boats pull right up to the dock and they unload their catch straight into the local seafood market I've been to seafood markets all over Mexico I must say this one has amazing variety and as you'd expect stunning freshness more than 90 species are commercially fished or farmed in the Ensenada area tuna shrimp spiny lobsters abalone sea urchin mussels clams sardines mackerel seawellk and an ever-changing array of local fin fish now a huge proportion of this catch is exported to Asia the local market is anything but shabby if you're wanting to sample some of the local bounty and not just look at it you don't really have to go very far in fact right next to the market is a little eatery of puesto really called mariscos el norteño it's a perfect and convenient place to taste some traditional Ensenada cuisine buenos dias este voiture a un ceviche de pescado moon taco de pescado y también un OCHA gracias pretty exciting stuff you get to walk through the market and sit down right beside it and have super fresh ceviche that's what I would are get to start up ceviche I also ordered of course the famous battered fish taco and then I ordered something else go bait another order the classic thing from around here made with smoked marlin with cheese melted and us have to see that this is a kind of special ceviche from around here and it's made with ground fish rather than cubed fish I like a little bit of the roasted jalapeno salsa over the top of that just look at this it's well it's almost an embarrassment of riches when it comes to condiments that you can put on these things we've got avocado with chili and cilantro and lime some roasted jalapeno a couple of different kinds of the dried our bowls also the mayonnaise that's thinned with a little bit of cream pickled chilies some tostadas radishes limes and over here we've got onions with cilantro and cabbage that goes on those classic fish tacos but I first have to down the tostada outside check when you order a go beta nod or taco here it's made of smoked Marlin and melted cheese on a corn tortilla delicious with that typical roasted arbol chili salsa and a little lime the classic crispy fish taco gets a more complex combination of creamy mayonnaise avocado sauce a little spicy jalapeno salsa and of course that requisite squeeze of fresh lime pick that up and enjoy often imitated rarely duplicated now the most important ingredient for making ceviches is obviously the fish and it should be absolutely pristine quality fresh fish what we would call sort of sashimi were sushi quality fish now what I bought was a piece of sashimi quality halibut beautiful stuff so I'm going to cut that up into small pieces to make a type of ceviche that we call a minced ceviche this is popular in the west coast of Mexico certainly up into the Baja Peninsula cut the fish into roughly one inch chunks spread that fish onto a small baking sheet lined with parchment paper and then for this type of ceviche I'm actually going to put the fish into the freezer and let it firm up so that I can mince it real finely that'll take about 40 minutes to firm I've got the vegetables for you okay so this type of ceviche takes carrot and some tomatoes and green chilies I'm going to choose the Serrano that we've got here and of course limes for a little bit later which one do you want to do I'll grate the carrot all right and then I will work on the chilies and the tomato now I always like to get as much of the juice out as possible and you'll notice that if you cut it crosswise and then gently squeeze you'll get that sort of gelatinous seed section out of the middle and then you can chop the tomato and it'll be much drier than if you were just to chop the whole thing together shall I start grinding the fish yes if you want to get it out of the freezer and look nice if it's okay I'll set up the grinder here for you I'll see now this is an electric grinder we'll just grind the fish the firm fish from the freezer right into the bowl with all the vegetables now to the pharmacy snakes the lime juice when I give it a sprinkling of salt to begin with and then we can adjust the seasonings in a minute sounds good I love the little addition of the carrot in this it's it's such a pretty color so we've got that now my idea here was that we would put a little bit of cilantro I want you to pick off some leaves I'm going to open up an avocado here and just take one slice out of it now onto the tostada why don't we make to the individuals each have our own bubble haste here there's a little bit of ceviche limey and good a little bit of cilantro on top of each one there's a piece of avocado for your ears okay then that's pure freshness I wanted to delve deeper into those iconic Baja fish tacos most agree that they originated here in Ensenada I mean it's the perfect integration of the abundant local seafood this Japanese influence on Baja and that delicious Mexican sensibility in the kitchen I stopped off at a place called el choque people a joint that's been making the classic for decades dos tacos if a scallop or followed the fish taco is a perfect example of influence and ingenuity it starts off with strips of fish that are battered in a simple combination of flour water and flavorings and then deep fried sounds a little Japanese right the golden crispy fish gets rolled up in a traditional Mexican corn tortilla and for the final touch a slathering of creamy mayo and cabbage the Spaniards brought both of those to Mexico and then of course the obligatory sparkle of chili salsa these fish tacos are so delicious I wanted to master them myself people are always asking me how I come across the traditional recipes that I make and share with everybody well sometimes I'm just lucky and somebody offers to show me how to make the dish but most of the time I have to go through three steps the first thing that I do is to read everything recipes descriptions to find out what people have said about that dish and then I go out and taste as many versions of it as I can if it happens to be a street food I get to watch people make it over and over and over and then the last thing that I do is to let start the chitchat do you like this version or that version do you put beer in your batter you just make it with water I learned a long time ago that if you ask somebody for the recipe they probably won't give it to me bah-ha 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 water that's a little bit of salt you want to blend this hill it's about of course puree Wow look at you let's just try to see season surfing food 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 but 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 Mikey'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 then 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 a fish taco without some fresh berry thinly sliced cabbage over the top of it that's exquisite

Channel: monteam

Views: 188,223

Rating: 4.8874679 out of 5

Keywords: New, Project

Id: qyZgKBedLro

Length: 14min 58sec (898 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 10 2012