When I come back from travels, I always want to make something for my family from the place where I have been.  Given that I couldn’t source the ingredients for a DC chili half smoke in Albury, and given that it is hot and summery here, I decided to make them a California style fish taco, cooked on the great Australian barbeque!  And I reckon they turned out pretty tasty, considering I had to improvise a little.  The biggest problem was that the limes were super expensive… apparently limes were one of the crops affected by the weird weather we have had in Australia this year, so to make enough of all of this to feed the hungry hoardes (seven people), it cost me about $8 just for limes!  But oh well.

So the components are as follows…

Green leafy salad with shredded cabbage (I was lazy and bought the pre-cut stuff from Safeway/Woolworths)

Corn tortillas… you need to cook/warm these.  Woolworths Select actually makes a generic brand of corn tortillas, and they were the only ones I could find in Albury, but they were fine.  There’s a lot of different ways heat them and a heap of methods online.  We put some on the barbeque and then microwaved some under a damp cloth.  Both methods worked just fine.

Salsa… pico de gallo, to be exact.  I made this up by just finely chopping onions, tomatoes, cilantro/corriander, some green pepper (aka green capsicum) and only a tiny bit of chili.  Then it was dressed with lime juice.  Just do the measurements of the various ingredients to taste.  This is also great to eat on its own with corn chips!

White sauce… I have to say, this sauce was unexpectedly awesome.  I made it up by mashing together a few different recipes and playing.  While this isn’t the same as the genuine “crema Mexicano,” it was really yummy on the tacos.  So basically, I took about 300mL of plain yoghurt, 400mL light sour cream, a tablespoon of mayonnaise (I know this sounds wrong, but it worked! PS.  All the measurements are pretty rough), a couple of tablespoons of finely chopped cilantro/coriander and chopped fresh dill… then add a pinch of ground cumin and a fair whack of cayenne pepper (to taste) and lime juice to taste and to get it to a good consistancy (not too runny).  Yum.  I caught my brother eating the leftovers of this sauce on corn chips for breakfast haha.

And then, there’s the fish.  As for the type of fish, I didn’t have any options except for the basic cheap fish in the deli at Coles (we do live 600km inland… and there has been a drought up until now, so river fish haven’t been that plentiful).  I marinated it in lime juice, cayenne pepper, a pinch of cumin and finely chopped corriander and let sit for several hours, then grilled it up on the barbeque.

Then all you have to do it construct your tacos.  It’s a super tasty, fresh and zingy meal option, especially great for summer… and a lot of the prep can be done in advance, all you have to cook is the fish and heat the tortillas.

Enjoy!