Recipe 23: Fish Tacos with Mango-Pineapple Slaw

 Sometime over the summer I was buying some meat from the meat section of the grocery store and looking at the fish.  I have never really been that impressed by the fish selection, probably because I am used to having a really good selection of fish in Oregon.  As the meat guy was wrapping up my purchase he started talking about how he loved making fish tacos with the cod there.

So I went back and looked up some recipes.  There are a ton of fish taco recipes out there, but I decided to choose one that looked really simple, but also seemed like it would be tasty.

 Here is a picture of the final result:

And here is the recipe that I ended up using: (link)

Ingredients

• 1 pound cod fillets
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• salt and ground black pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup reduced-fat mayonnaise
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 tablespoon ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 3 cups shredded cabbage
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh mango
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh pineapple
• 1/2 cup chopped red onion
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 fresh jalapeno pepper, chopped
• 8 (8 inch) flour tortillas

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2. Place cod fillets on a large sheet of aluminum foil; pour lemon juice over fish and season with salt and black pepper to taste. Fold the foil around the fish and seal to create a pouch; place pouch in a baking dish.
3. Bake in the preheated oven until the fish flakes easily with a fork, about 20 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, whisk vinegar, mayonnaise, sugar, 1 tablespoon salt, 1 tablespoon black pepper, and garlic powder in a bowl until smooth. Combine cabbage, mango, pineapple, red onion, cilantro, and jalapeno in large bowl. Pour dressing over vegetables and fruit; toss to combine. Cover and refrigerate slaw until ready to serve.
5. Divide fish evenly among flour tortillas. Spoon slaw over fish to serve. 

The Process

The first step was to cook the fish.  I seasoned it a bit with salt and pepper and lemon juice.  However, I definitely think that I didn't season it enough.  I think that the fish ended up fine, but it was a little bland.  There might be other things that would be good to season it with, but I don't have that expertise.

 While the fish was cooking I chopped up the mangoes, which was something that I had never done before.  The middle of the mango is this huge put that takes up nearly half of the fruit, so it was interesting working around that. 

Here is the base of the coleslaw, the cabbage with some cilantro and the jalapeno.

 Soon the fish was done.  I have to say that pictures of cooked cod don't look much different than pictures of uncooked cod.  I also cooked this for a little longer.  It wasn't quite flaky enough after 20 minutes.

 I was in Texas while I made this recipe, but somehow Sprinkles managed to get tangled up in my laundry!

After the slaw was done I constructed the tacos.  Here is the tortilla with the fish.

And here is the final result again, now with the slaw added.

I thought that the slaw of this recipe was really good.  The fish was pretty simple and a little bland, but the slaw carried the tacos and made them good.  I think a little more seasoning of the fish would certainly help, but overall this was a simple recipe that was very easy to make and tasted good.