Thursday Night Epic Fish Tacos (with pico de gallo AND gaucamole)

Aah, the taco. Where do I even begin to describe how my love affair with those little envelopes of delicious began…

Growing up, taco night was a big, and I mean BIG deal for me. It meant a table filled with possibilities. Did I want cheese (duh, even then I knew when it comes to cheese, the answer is always yes), did I want tomatoes, or maybe lettuce, or sour cream? Or perhaps just a crunchy shell and a pile of richly spiced ground beef. Needless to say I was a happy camper. The way all the flavours came together – it just blew my 11 year old brain.
So imagine my amazement later in life when I realized tacos could be soooo much more than what Old El Paso told you they could be on those bright yellow taco-kit boxes! I realized you didn’t always have to use ground beef and that little packet of taco seasoning – you could potentially put any assortment of flavours, in any sort of tortilla, top with it with whatever you fancy, and have an easy and scrumpitous meal.

From there, things just sort of steam rolled – until one day, I found myself seriously considering how I could make opening my own taco themed food truck possible.

Well, unfortunately for the time being I am taco-foodtruck-less, however I am not taco-recipe-less.

Daniel and I make fish tacos at least once a month – more like once a week during the summer months (as much as I love Canada, we do get a little short-changed on our summers). I like to think that together, we have truly perfected our recipe. It really is a thing of beauty and I am just dying to share it with as many people as I can.
Now this recipe may, at first glance, seem extremely involved and time consuming, but really it’s just a matter of chopping everything up and tossing it together. When you have two people doing it, you can bang it out in no time!

Of course, one of the great things about tacos is that you can adjust what goes in them to suit your own flavour cravings. Feel free to switch up any part of this recipe if you’re not on board with what I’ve chosen to include (it took me years to even be in the same room with cilantro, let alone allow it any where near my plate).

**You Will Need**
For the Fish:
> 3-4 Tilapia filets (skin, bones, etc removed. serves 4-6 – you can adjust amount of fish accordingly)
> 1 jalapeno pepper
> 1 shallot
> 2 cloves of garlic
> 1 lime
> pinch of italian seasoning mix
> pinch of red pepper flakes
> a good glug of olive oil
> salt and pepper to taste
For the Pico de Gallo:
> 1 jalapeno pepper
> 1 pint grape tomatoes (we usually use a package with mixed colours, like orange and yellow as it adds a nice pop to it)
> 1 clove garlic
> 1/4 of a red onion
> 1 handfull of fresh parsley or cilantro (whatever you have on hand or prefer)
> 1/2 lime
> salt and pepper to taste
For the Gaucamole:  
> 1 ripe avocado
> 1 clove garlic
> 1/4 red onion
> 1/2 lime
> small handful of cilantro (optional)
> salt and pepper to taste
For the toppings (optional):
> 1/4 of a head of green cabbage
> 1 red chili
> 1/2 lime
> cilantro
> shredded cheese
> non-fat plain greek yogurt
> and don’t forget 12 small tortillas (we like to use La Tortilla Factory’s corn tortillas, they even have flavoured ones which are amazing!)

Alrighty! First things first – the fish. Grab your cast iron skillet (or, if you don’t have one, any frying pan will do really). Add a few glugs of oil to the pan, and preheat to a medium heat.
Begin by thoroughly rinsing and drying your fish – and placing it on a tray or in a bowl. Next, start finely chopping your jalapeno (seeds removed), shallot and garlic. Spread chopped mixture over the fish. Splash a good amount of oil and freshly squeezed lime juice over top of the fish. Then sprinkle each filet with a few good pinches of italian spice, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper. Massage all of this lovely goodness into your fish, making sure to coat each piece nicely. Place each filet into preheated pan, and move on to making your yummy toppings (make sure you don’t loose any of that ‘marinade’ you just made for your fish, scoop out all the little bits left at the bottom of the tray and plop them right back onto the fish).
When cooking the fish, try not to move it around very much, as this may cause the fish to break apart and be more difficult to flip. Depending on the thickness of your filets, each side should take about 5-8 minutes or so. When it’s done the fish will be opaque in the centre, and will be slightly firm and springy to the touch. Cover fish and set aside until ready to eat.

just chopping some things

For your Pico de Gallo, you’ll want to start with my least favourite part of this whole process – chopping and de-seeding the tomatoes. It’s important to get rid of the seeds and liquid inside the tomatoes, otherwise you end up with a watery mess. Slice tomatoes in half, scoop out the seeds, and finely dice tomatoes – put this into a serving bowl. Next finely dice the red onion, garlic, parsley and jalapeno (seeds also removed). Add those to your bowl. Squeeze the juice of one lime over the works, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Stir it all up.

For your gaucamole, carefully cut your avocado in half, remove the pit and scoop the flesh into a bowl. Finely chop your garlic, onion and cilantro – add to the bowl. Squeeze juice of one lime into the bowl, and season with salt and pepper. Mash everything together with a fork until desired consistency (I like to leave it a big chunky).

Finally, as a last garnish I like to make a crunchy-cabbage-slaw-type-thing. Finely slice up the cabbage into thin strips and put into a bowl. Chop up about 3/4 of your red chilli (you may wish to remove seeds if you don’t want a lot of spice, but I usually like to leave mine in),and throw in with the cabbage. Dress with as much lime juice, chopped cilantro, salt and pepper as you’d like. You may wish to warm your tortillas in the oven or microwave for about ten minutes or so, but it’s not necessary.

Now comes the fun part! We like to serve this meal as a buffet style. We put everything out on the counter and each person can dress their tacos however they like (of course I load mine up with everything in sight). For the fish, just gently tear it apart into bite size chunks and serve on a cutting board, or straight from the pan. Everything else can just be served right in the bowl you mixed it in.

Viola! I know it seems like a lot of stuff, but I promise it’s really easy and definitely worth the little extra work.

make sure you have wine with your meal – it’s essential.

**A Few Notes**  
> you may notice that we also used shrimp as well – we happened to have some on hand that we wanted to use up and just ate them on the side 🙂
> we also adjusted the amount few things since there we had seven hungry people to feed (we doubled the guac recipe because well – everyone loves guac).

Levi wanted to help too – he does love his fish tacos

Happy fish taco-ing everyone – time for me to go watch the Maple Leafs kick some butt!

The best cookbooks ever!

If you could pick just one famous person to meet in your lifetime, who would it be?
A hunky actor? A beautiful singing star? The Prime Minister? Just kidding, no one wants to meet him – sorry Steve.

Well ladies and gentlemen, my choice would be celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.
I think he is just the greatest gift to television since colour sets were invented. Watching him has been my inspiration to really have fun in the kitchen and to try everything under the sun.

Now I know what you’re thinking (or maybe I don’t…but just play along anyway), Mr.Oliver is often criticized for ‘taking too many short cuts’, or ‘not being a real gourmet chef…blah blah blah’, and to that I say poppycock! The brilliant thing about Jamie Oliver is that he makes cooking fun, interesting and an adventure in flavour, all while making it so easy you wonder why you haven’t been listening to him your whole life. With him, it’s not about following a bunch of boring set steps and using the same old flavour combinations, it’s about finding what you love and throwing it all together in the most fun and delicious way possible! What do I care if he uses a store-bought pesto once and while to add extra dimension to a dish, or doesn’t always make his own chicken broth. I mean come on, who has time to do all that?!

I really can’t say enough about how much I truly admire Jamie’s approach to cooking and food in general (and the fact that he is hilarious and adorable is rather helpful as well). If you find yourself in a cooking rut, and are looking for an adventure in food, please please PLEASE pick up Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals.

This has quickly become my go-to cookbook when I can’t seem to think of anything to make for dinner. Every recipe is dynamic, delicious and ready in 30 minutes or less! How great is that!

For the slightly more adventurous home chef, or one who simply has an appreciation for truly beautiful cookbooks, I recommend Jamie at Home.

This is such a great book! All the recipes are categorized by season, so you can choose a dish you’d like based on what produce is best at any given time of the year. It also includes instructions on how to grow your own wonderful herb and veggie garden – and contains the loveliest photographs of Jamie’s own home garden and the meals he makes.

So there you have it, two cookbooks that I guarantee will have you cooking up a storm and having oodles of fun while doing it. Or if you’d rather, check out one of his many amazing cooking shows, you will enjoy every moment of it.

Happy cooking!

The entire cat population is my best friend

this is the best sweater ever, i must have it

Lemony-Garlicy Pasta with Spinach

Pasta is quite possibly my favourite food of all time. Now I know this is quite a tall order – as well let’s face it, there’s not much I won’t eat – but it’s just so gosh darn versatile and incredibly simple to make!

Generally speaking, when it comes to pasta, I find that simple is usually the way to go.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some absolutely delicious complicated pasta, but really it doesn’t need to be so complicated, especially when you’re cooking at home. Cook up one, two, or TEN veggies of your choice, throw in some garlic, toss with any noodle you happen to fancy that day and garnish with a bit of cheese. BAM you have a wonderful and oh-so-easy meal. Heck, growing up we even skipped the veggies all together and went straight for the cheese. My Nonna would serve us spaghetti with butter and a whack load of freshly grated parmesan cheese. That equals for kid-pasta-HEAVEN. Now, as the sophisticated and refined adult I am, I would like to be able to say that I no longer eat pasta in such a manner, alas, I would be lying to you. It really is too easy and delicious to give up (even if it is a diet’s worst nightmare).

While the Italians may not have actually invented pasta, they sure as hell perfected it. The best part about Italian cuisine, pasta in particular, is how simple it really is. While I was in Italy, I had hands down the best food I have ever tasted in my life (think fresh caprese salad, fish you just watched being caught that morning, and dear god the pasta – I mean really it’s not even fair). The thing that made this food so incredible was the simplicity of it! A few outstanding ingredients, a little pinch of salt here and there, some cheese, and that’s all you need. No slaving away in a kitchen for 8 million years or complicated cooking methods. Just good food!
Just look at this spread we had in Porto Venere(pictured below). As you can see, we hadn’t quite mastered the ordering process yet, so we usually ended up with enough food for a small army. Somehow we managed to eat it all anyway…

Aaaanyway, I could talk about pasta and how much I love Italy forever, but enough is enough. It’s a recipe you want!

You Will Need
> one package of spaghetti (or any pasta of your choice, sometimes I like to substitute the regular pasta for brown nice noodles as a slightly healthier and gluten free option)
> 3 cups baby spinach leaves
> 6-9 cloves of garlic (depending on how garlicy you’d like it – I usually go with 8)
> 8 tbsp of good quality olive oil
> juice of one lemon
> zest of one lemon (optional)
> salt and pepper to taste
> red chilli flakes (optional)
> parmesan cheese for garnish (optional)

Begin by bringing a large pot of water to a boil. Be sure to salt this water well (you want it to taste like sea water!), otherwise your pasta will not be seasoned properly). Meanwhile finely chop your cloves of garlic. Rinse the spinach leaves and drain well – set aside.

Next, in a saucepan begin to heat the olive oil on a medium low heat. Gently cook garlic in oil, stirring often, for approx. 10 minutes or until just golden (be careful not over cook garlic as it will become bitter – super yuck). Add the fresh lemon juice (this is also the time to add the lemon zest and chilli flakes if you are using them), season with salt and pepper.

Once cooked to your desired firmness, drain pasta, reserving a few tablespoons of the pasta water. Add pasta back to pot, with the spinach, garlic oil and a couple tablespoons of pasta water. Stir together.
Garnish with freshly grated parmesan, or more lemon or pepper if desired!

**Notes**
> you can toss some leftover chicken in the pasta as well
> feel free to add in any other veggies – I find that kale, bok choy, asparagus, broccoli, mushrooms, or grape tomatoes work best with the lemony flavour (note that you may need to pre-cook some of these veggies such as the broccoli or asparagus before tossing them in)

All done!

See how simple that was? Now it’s time to slurp those noodles like there’s no tomorrow!

Easy-Peasy Choco-Banana Oatmeal Muffins (Healthy, Wooo!)

Everyone likes muffins. If you don’t…well then you are just weird or lying to yourself

I would eat muffins everyday if they weren’t so bloody fattening, and while I do LOVE to eat more than anything else, it’s still nice to be healthy most of the time. Finding that balance between oh-so-deicious and a healthy diet can sometimes be a bit tricky.

Well my friends, look no further! I have perfected a delectable and low fat muffin that will knock your socks off without knocking your weight-loss goals off track.

Let’s get to it shall we? These are so simple, and are easily adjusted to fit your personal taste.

.

You Will Need:
> 3 ripe mashed bananas
> 1 cup vanilla soy milk
> 2 eggs
> 1 tbsp Baking Powder
> 3 cups Rolled Oats
> 1 tsp vanilla extract
> 6 tbsp mini chocolate chips

Start by preheating your oven to 375 degrees

Make sure your bananas are nicely mashed up (the more ripe they are the better!). Mix all the ingredients together, except the chocolate chips. It’s best to fold them in right before you scoop the batter into the muffin pan to prevent them from settling at the bottom of your batter.

Insert liners into the muffin pan (you could spray the muffin pan with cooking spray instead, however I find the liners work much better and are more convenient).

Fold in the chocolate chips (yaaay!) and begin to divide batter into 12-15 muffin cups.

Bake 20-30 minutes until edges are golden brown and they are firm to the touch.

Let stand until cool and viola! Delicious and healthy muffins!

** A few notes**
> you can substitute the soy milk for skim (if you use regular skim milk adding a bit of sweetener may be necessary) or vanilla almond milk – anything works!
> add nuts/seeds/raisins to the batter for an even healthier treat
> be sure to store these in the fridge or freezer (they freeze so well!!) or they will spoil very quickly, and that would be sad 😦

Now you have a great breakfast or snack that travels easily – and you don’t have to feel guilty about eating two as they are 115 calories and 3g of fat each!!