Taco Game Night!

Tags

Apples to Apples, cod, cod taco, fish taco sauce, fish tacos, game night, island flair, mango salsa, salmon, salmon taco, shredded beef tacos

If you have never organized a game night with your friends, you ought to! It’s a chance to break out all those board games that we all buy and really play them with a bunch of people – which always ends with lots of laughs and vows to “do this again soon!”

We have been trying to get together with one of our friends each week to have dinner and play some games and really spend some quality time with everyone before we left England. It’s a great for keeping our house more tidy, making those meals that you like to make only if you have company over, laughing and generally having a great (inexpensive) evening in with friends! Who wouldn’t like that??!

For our game night, we decided to theme our dinner so that everyone could contribute a dish, salsa or side to make one big buffet fit for every taste! In short, a perfect way to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, even if we celebrated it a bit earlier than most….  sssshhh!!

A cod taco in a warm corn torilla, garnished with mango salsa and sliced avocado

We wanted to really make fish tacos so we chose salmon and cod and because we wanted to make sure everyone was pleased, we also made Colorado shredded beef tacos as well. No one was disappointed in the choices. And the best part, was that there were so many possible combinations, you didn’t want to eat the same taco twice!! It kept our taste buds hopping, as much as the competition in the room while playing some heated, feverish rounds of Apples to Apples!

one of our dinner guests, individually warming the tortillas!

To compliment the fish tacos, I made the fish taco sauce that I raved about before that was a big hit as well, and some mango salsa to add a fruity island flair to the fish tacos – which just seemed to beg for it. Needless to say, the tacos and the games were both big hits, respectively! We filled a table with all of the possible toppings and salsas and plenty of chips and warm corn tortillas to assemble any taco that struck you and we all stuffed ourselves to the gills that night!

our toppings included shredded lettuce, cabbage, diced onions, tomatoes, sliced avocados, extra cilantro, refried beans, pinto beans and three different salsas along with fish taco sauce!

Because Cinco de Mayo is Sunday, each day this week I will post a different taco recipe! Today, I will leave you with a recipe to make your own fish tacos. In the days to follow, watch for recipes for tomatillo salsa, Colorado shredded beef, margarita sangria and mango salsa! By Sunday, you will be able to re-create our amazing meal and knock the taste buds of all your friends and family out of the park – they will never go further than your kitchen for tacos again!

Ingredients:

• 1/2 – 1lb of fresh fish of your choice, per person. Salmon, cod & sea bass are popular and delicious choices.
  (for our taco night, we had 7 hungry faces and served 4 lbs of fish and 2 lbs of beef and we had plenty leftover and everyone ate their fill as well) 
• 1 egg per pound of fish, lightly beaten in a wide, shallow bowl
• 1 C of flour per 2 lb of fish seasoned with a touch of paprika, salt and pepper to taste
• Panko bread crumbs
• peanut oil

Clean your fish under cold, running water. Remove any skin, scales and slimy residue (if any) and pat dry with paper towels.

Slice the fish fillets, against the grain, into “bite-size” strips. You want them to be thin enough that with breading, they wont be too cumbersome to eat in a taco.

sliced salmon on the left and cod on the right

Set out one wide, shallow dish with the lightly beaten eggs, another with the seasoned flour, and a third with the Panko bread crumbs. Line a plate with a paper towel to place your breaded fish pieces on. Fill a wide, high sided pan with at least 1-1/2 inches of peanut or other neutral oil and bring to temperature. If you drip a little egg into the fry oil, it should sizzle and bubble a little – then the temperature is just right for frying. If the oil is too hot, your breading will turn golden and burn before the fish on the inside is cooked, adjust the heat as necessary to maintain an even cooking temperature.

coating the pieces in egg

Dredge each piece of fish in the seasoned flour, then dip it in the egg mixture then coat in bread crumbs. One you have coated your piece of fish, carefully slide it into the oil, turning it once the bottom has turned a light, golden brown color. Once the entire piece of fish has gained the light golden brown color on all sides and the fish is cooked through, remove and drain on paper towels and allow to cool while you continue to fry the rest of the fish pieces.

carefully patting the panko bread crumbs to each side

Serve room temperature or warm (you can keep these on a plate in the oven, so the breading doesn’t become soggy until you are ready to eat) with your favorite salsa and other toppings, wrapped in a warm corn tortilla!

A Crabby Seafood Feast!

Tags

andouille sausage, chorizo sausage, Crab Pot, crabs, mussels, seafood boil, seafood restaurant, Seattle, shrimp

Have you heard of the Crab Pot? Its a fabulous restaurant in Seattle that we really enjoy eating at. Basically they are known for a seafood boil that is outta this world! It is a combination of shrimp, mussels, four types of crab legs, corn and potatoes and it is worth every cent!

The ambiance of the place is open, right on the water and there are long, wooden tables with big, steel mixing bowls strategically placed at the foot of the tables, butcher paper laid over the table and your hot, steaming seafood boil sprinkled across the table so that everyone just grabs what they want and dig in!

Each person is given a bib, mallet and a board to crack your crab legs on. At the height of the summer when the crabs are the tastiest, there are four different types of crab legs that can included in your boil along with the mainstays and it offers a great, interactive type meal. Everyone gets their hands messy cracking open legs and dunking the meat in hot melted butter, sucking up shrimp and mussels, snapping corn off the cob and grabbing the occasional bit of crusty sourdough bread. Honestly, if you love seafood you can’t dislike this restaurant!

a little mini feast on a lovely summer day!

The menus have delightful cartoon drawings in them, making the place even cuter and more fun to eat at. Plus it just tugs on my ole heartstrings to see such inviting cartoon drawings. What can I say, I’m susceptible to art.

The only problem is the distance we would have to travel from England to have dinner – so I decided to rectify that and make it at home!

Luckily, I was able to go to the market on a day where their crabs weren’t sold out!

In fact, we managed to find the best deals on them so I wound up buying four for less than $10! I knew that we would want more than just the crabs and I remembered that we had been talking about doing a seafood boil for a long time so I went ahead and picked up all the rest of bits we needed to do that – potatoes, corn, sausage & shrimp. The mussels weren’t looking too good, so we just left those out.

This is a meal that comes together incredibly quickly because everything is just steamed together then it is done!

The only hang-up is that we dont have a steaming basket large enough to hold everything at once or all the corn or all the potatoes, so instead, we quickly boiled most everything until it was just done then tossed it all together with a little salt, pepper and Old Bay seasoning.

To keep with the spirit of our favorite restaurant, we divided everything into two big mixing bowls and made up a little plate for Mei, and sat down to eat. All the seafood was moist and fresh, the corn sweet and crunchy, the potatoes were velvety and fluffy, sausage just a bit spicy and the crab & shrimp were cooked to perfection. It was a great meal and one that we certainly don’t get to enjoy often, but we will easily have again if we can get the crabs for nearly as good a price.

If you haven’t had a seafood boil yet, the next time you are on the coast, look into a place to have one – they are straight outta this world! Although, if you can’t wait –  try this recipe at home today!

Ingredients:

• Crab. As much as you like! Two crabs per person seem to give the best serving size if you have whole crabs. If you are using just the legs then you might want roughly 3-4 crabs per person.
• Shrimp. You want to get these with the head on and as big as you can get them
• Corn on the cob, cut into manageable parts. We opt to cut ours in thirds. At least one or two per person
• 1.5 – 2 lbs of Sausage. Traditionally, andouille sausage is used but it is next to impossible to find here so we use chorizo and it works great!
• ~ 2 lbs of Mussels. Fresh, scrubbed and de-bearded of course
• ~ 1 lb of Baby Red potatoes, scrubbed then either halved or quartered
• Old Bay seasoning
• salt & pepper
• clarified butter for serving
• butter for melting onto your corn and potatoes, if you like & lemon wedges, if desired

Bring water to a boil in a large stock pot fitted with a steaming tray. Make sure the water goes halfway up to the steamer tray but does not touch it. Once it has come to a boil, toss in the potatoes & corn then cover and steam for about  three minutes.

Open and toss in the rest of the ingredients, cover and cook for a few more minutes until the potatoes have cooked through, the shrimp shells have turned  a rosy red color and the color of the crab shells have intensified and brightened.

Remove from the steamer and toss in a large mixing bowl with Old Bay, salt and pepper to taste.

If you do not have a steamer tray that can accomodate all of your meal or your meal in parts, then bring a large pot of water to a boil. Once the water has reached a boil, drop in your potatoes and cook them just until a knife inserted in one of the larger sections just cuts through it. Remove immediately and put in a large mixing bowl, tossing with salt and pepper to taste.

In the same pot of boiling water, cook the corn. Remove once cooked and brush with melted butter (if desired) and toss with the potatoes.

Cook the sausage just for minute or two to heat up, remove and toss with the corn and potatoes. Put the mussels in, covering and cooking for about five minutes or until most all of the shells pop open, remove and toss with the potato mixutre. Then dunk in the crab legs and cook just until cooked through. Remove and toss with everything else. Add as much Old Bay seasoning as you would like and make sure to thoroughly toss everything so that each bit is seasoned.

Serve with crusty sourdough bread, melted & clarified butter and lemon wedges and eat while hot!