Friday, October 13, 2006

Tacos de pescado anyone?

Pepe had some work to do in Ensenada, just for tonight. I know... I can hear you saying: Ensenada.. tonight.. work... yeah right. Well, I'm going to let your selves with your own thirty thoughts, what is bringing me here is about "los tacos de pescado".
As you know, we spent several years at the university in Ensenada, and of course we ate sufficient amount of tacos de pescado, and I say sufficient and not a lot, because for a student's budget they were kind of expensive, so once and a while we use to walk to the corner stand and eat no more than two tacos de pescado, crispy fish topped with onions, cabbage, salsa, mayo, and some lime...mmmm.
But why this fish is special?, why Ensenada has as speciality this kind of tacos?, why the fish need to be covered with batter?
After deep thinking I came with a conclusion. At some point in Ensenada history, existed the presence of English men (see this paper for some more information about it). What is one of the most popular food in England? Fish and chips, well... probably they intoduced their kind of batter covering the fish pieces; and since in Mexico every thing goes in tortilla, it was a very easy transition, of course more elements were put into the tacos, like salsas, onions and so on.
Unfortunately I haven't found tacos de pescado in San Diego that are like those in Ensenada, because usually in many places the tortilla and the fish are cold, too much cabbage and they need to improve their salsas.
Although you can make your own, there are a lot of recipes on the web you can use and have a nice dinner Ensenada style.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Daleth, have you tried El Zarape on Park Blvd., in University Heights. They make really good fish tacos (and lobster tacos), but not sure if it's in batter. I love that idea...of course Fish and Chips (or Chish and Fips, as we called it in our family, not sure why)..but they didn't adopt the habit of wrapping the food in newspaper!!

daleth said...

Pepe said its not about how warm the tortilla is, but about how fresh it is. If the tortilla is fresh is more soft and moist, as a result we have a better taco.
And no, I haven't tried those tacos from El Zarape, maybe I'll take my words back.

Lauren said...

Yum!