 So now y'all come into my kitchen. This is cooking today. Hi, welcome to Cooking Today. I'm glad you're here. Happy Wednesday to you. Today I've got a treat for you. It's so so good. Of course, we have already state the claim that we love Mexican food around here, don't we? Well today I'm making really good, really flavorful street tacos black and fish. We're going to char our little small corn tortillas right on our open flame on the stove. We're going to blacken that fish so it's got a lot of a lot of heat and smokiness and lots of flavor. And then to cool it all down, we're going to pickle some cucumbers and onions with a little garlic. They're a little bit sugary. They're a little bit vinaigree and a little bit salty. And then because you can't have a street taco without a little bit of sloppiness to it, we're going to do a really great creamy, zangy sauce out of our pickling liquid that we're putting on our onions and our cucumbers. We're going to make a really great little sauce. So delicious. So let's start first on our pickled onions and cucumbers. So well, oh, and let me just say this, pause. These are delicious. They don't even have to always be on your tacos. They can just be beside your sandwich or right on top of your barbecue. They are a great little item, especially in the summer when you kind of want that vinaigree by. They're a great thing to just keep in your refrigerator at all times. All times. You're going to love them. So we're starting with some sugar, three quarters of a cup. And then we're going to do three quarters of a cup of apple cider vinegar. It's just a little sweeter, which I just really love. Vinegar is just such a fun bite when something's real heavy or spicy or greasy. Kind of bags for a little tang. You know what I mean? And then we're going to do about a cup of water. Isn't that easy? You probably have all of this in your fridge as we speak. Then we're going to do a whole tablespoon of salt in our pickling liquid. And then this is just going to go on the stove. And we want to bring it to a boil. Okay? Isn't that simple? So I'm going to kind of keep my ears and my eyes on this pot. Give that a little stir. We want that to boil. And we want the sugar and the salt to dissolve nice and smooth and clean in there. Then we have an English cucumber. And an English cucumber is the one that comes individually at the grocery wrapped in its own sleeve. You know what I'm talking about instead of the garden cucumbers that are a little bit shorter and kind of fatter. And they have a lot of seeds in them. And then your option is to buy these, garden these, uh, English cucumbers that are the long skinny ones that come in their own sleeve. I just cut the ends right off and then used my vegetable peeler to take the skin right off. And then I'm just using my knife to make really nice thin. Actually, that one's not very thin. Oh, no, you got one. Mm-hmm. Oh. Cucumbers y'all make me think about growing up. They are so fresh and they remind me of when my daddy had a garden. Oh, they're so good. So good. Well, what's so nice about these English cucumbers over the garden cucumbers is that they don't have as many seeds or not as wet on the inside. Which makes them kind of my first choice if you ask me. So we're just doing skinny slices. Okay. And there we go. Easy as that. Then I actually already have three cloves of garlic that I peeled and I'm mashed. Because I don't want them to be little tiny pieces in my pickles or, you know, my little pickles here. I just want them to flavor the pickling liquid for that little tiny bit of garlic that we love. That just, it's almost like these pickles just kind of beg for garlic. Mm-hmm. Oh, so good. Goodness sakes. All right. Then I have a red onion. You can do, there's probably room in this recipe. If you wanted to do two onions, you could do two red onions or you could do a red and a, you know, red and a yellow if you like. I'm just going to do this one red for today. And all I want to do on these is cut them in half and then cut their ends right off. Take off the outside, you know, the tough layer on the outside. And we just want to cut them into really thin, thin slices. The thinner, the better on both of these, the pickles and the, or the cucumbers and the onions. Because we want them to be pliable. Like when they boil in this liquid and then they cool in this liquid, we want them to be so tender and pliable so that we can really just ribbon them on and pile them up on our yummy tacos. The spite is just outstanding. One of my favorites. So all I'm going to do, I'm going to keep cutting these into really thin slices. You see those? Almost transparent. You can almost see right through them. We're going to boil them in our pickling liquid for several minutes. And then when we come back, I'm going to show you what we're going to do with them and then we're going to move on to our fish. This is cooking today. Hi, welcome back to Cooking Stay. If you're just joining us, I'm making blackened fish, street tacos. And you may say, well, what's the difference between a regular taco and a street taco? Well, you just think about why I think about like my trips to New York or Boston and places like that where you're out on the street. You get a good wafth of something delicious happening. And you walk over to those little carts and they have tacos ready for you. And generally they have really good meat. A lot of times there's like barbacoa or something delicious in there. But most often the reason they're street tacos is because you can hold them in your hand and they're really, really small. And you can walk along the street. They're for sale on the street. You can walk along the street and eat them right outside. Most often they're small and that's what we've got here. They have started making these tiny tortillas available at your grocery store. So these are small and they actually say on the package street tacos. So you can make some really small handheld loaded tacos. Often street tacos are multiples. You know like if you go to any other place, you know, you may get, I don't know, one taco to tacos. But a lot of the time because these are small and you're going to eat them in your hands. They're kind of in like a little boat or on a little plate or something like that that has maybe four, five of them folded up in there. Because you want to get full, but you want to be able to carry them in your hand. So that's kind of what that's them apart. The smell of street tacos when we go on vacation is just one of the best. I absolutely love it. In our case today, we are going to do tilapia. And tilapia is just a really nice light tasting white fish. It's pretty affordable and it's pretty widely available at most grocery stores and markets for sure. You can definitely find tilapia frozen in fillets. You would just want to thaw them according to your package directions. But you can also go to a lot of places where they have it really fresh and it's already thawed in beautiful packages. And so that's what I've gotten here today. Now, before I move on to my tilapia, let me go back to our pickled veggies that are going right on top of our tacos. So I boiled my cucumbers and my onions until they were really tender. And you can see those cucumbers get almost translucent. You can kind of just see through and they get really, really tender. Like I said, we want them to almost like ribbon and fold and just lay so nicely on our tacos. And they are vinegary and sweet and so delicious, y'all. Before we do anything. So I turned those off completely. We want to take a tablespoon measure and we want to reserve two tablespoons of the pickling liquid. Not a lot, but just enough so that we get that flavor carried over into our creamy little tangy sauce that we're going to make. Shortly, I'm going to let that cool before we continue with our sauce. Then all we need to do is take this off. Now, these actually could be done two days in advance, frankly. We're probably needed, we probably needed a little more time. But for the sake of showing you, these need to sit on the counter and cool completely to room temperature, no steam coming off of them. Then I transfer them and put them in my, like a big jar and refrigerate them until they're chilled. That's ideal for these pickled veggies. So we're going to let those hang out right there and cool off a little bit. But ideally, that's how you would do it. Let them cool to room temperature and then transfer them into an airtight jar. So easy, easy, easy. I'm not even making my own blackening seasoning. I've done it before and if you want to go from scratch, have like yummy smoked paprika and all kinds of good stuff. You can go into our archives and find my recipe for blackening seasoning. But there's a really good one on the market and we really love it. So I'm going to just easily use my favorite blackening seasoning and you can use your favorite blackening seasoning. I'll go right over those. Without fail. They're already laughing. I sneeze when I use blackening seasoning. I've already gotten my noses already tickling. They know. They know. My camera man, they're already, I can see him. They're giggling because they know. I have to be careful. Who gets in my nose? Okay, so I've got a good skillet. Big saute pan on the back. And I've got it set over. We want to go ahead and get a little preheat on that. You don't want to put fish in a cold skillet. You want to have a good little sear on the outside with this oil on this blackening seasoning. And then so I'm going to have that preheat for just a minute over medium heat. This will stainless. It's going to get pretty hot. And so I'm going to let that go. And I'm going to do one more little swirl of oil. Just to cover the bottom. We don't want to deep fry this fish. We just want to have just enough oil in there that it will keep our fish from sticking. And it will, you know, kind of help us have a release. And then that oil gets hot. It connects with that fish and gets us a good little crisp. So I have taken a little bit of oil, just barely any, and rubbed both sides of the fish down. I'm going to flip them, do the same thing, and blacken this side as well. When we come back, we're going to put these in our skillet. We're going to make our little creamy tangy sauce that's going to go on top. We're going to put these fish tacos together. They're going to be good. Come back and see us. This is cooking today. Did you know what I was going to say? Like it's literally right here. I can feel it in my nose. Whenever you're doing that, first thing I'm just like, she's going to sneeze. Hey, you can't hold you. Oh, please. Hi, welcome back. We're making blackened fish street tacos today. Lots of good things going on. We have pickled some cucumbers, and a look. Oh gosh. Okay. Can we see this? Can we see this? We have pickled some cucumbers and some red onions until they're just tender and translucent. They have soaked up sugar in vinegar, and salt, and garlic. Oh, they're so good. We're letting those cool down. They're going to be our chilled, vinegared tangy bite on top of our seasoned fish tacos. We cannot wait for you all to eat these. We have tilapia that is going to spit without question, but we're doing it. Oh, yes. We have tilapia plays that we have blackened with store-bought blackening seasoning, nothing fancy. And I'm putting those in a skillet over medium heat that was just brushed with just a little little bit of oil, and we're going to get a good little sear on that. It probably only takes two to two minutes on each side, maybe three. And what will happen is it goes in, tilapia feels very firm when it goes in. But then as it cooks, when we flip it over on the second side, it will start to kind of flake, and it turns white, and it's beautiful. I can only get two fillets in this particular skillet, so I'll have to do mine in batches. And as I move them off, the cooked ones I'll put them on a little fresh tray. And then we'll just kind of take it with forks and pull it apart to be this yummy flaky blackened fishy bites. So good. So we're going to watch those, and I'm telling you what, y'all, that blackening seasoning in here is getting me. A snake is in the break. We've got the giggles. Everybody is choking on it right now. Smells good, though. Does everyone need to cough in the rim on the count of three? It's like we're being gassed out of here. Maybe this is a secret weapon that we need to all know about. Anyway, delicious. So I'm going to check on these, see how they're starting to get white right around the edges? I'm going to use my tongs. Look how pretty. Okay, we're going to go on this side. Oops, I didn't do that one very well. There we go. Oh, see? Okay. So see is it cooks? That's a good little object lesson, wasn't it? That it gets a little bit white, it gets a little bit flaky, and it's delicious. So we're going to let those finish. I reserved two tablespoons of the pickling liquid out of our veg right here. Okay? And I have the juice of one lime. And then what we're going to do is we're going to do a little bit of mayonnaise. I usually do about four, five, six tablespoons of mayonnaise, seven or eight. I don't know. Kind of really just to get it to the consistency that you want your cream sauce. Because you can't have a street taco without a little sloppy element. That's what I think. It's got to almost like drip down your elbow, railing your shirt, to make it good and make it memorable, right? I didn't count. I was talking. So I'm going to say that that was, I don't know how many. But there's that extra one just in case. Okay, let me shape my tolop you real quick before I whisk that. And it's going to continue just like with any meat. It's going to continue to cook a little bit as it sits here. So we don't have to worry. Oh, my word. It smells good. Oh, yeah, I can tell that it's cooked. Oh, yeah, that looks really, really good. Okay, I'm going to stick this other one in real fast. We're sticking this other one in. We're going to let it go. We're going to get a nice color on it. And then we'll whisk together our little sauce. So simple, so simple. Okay. I'm going to get a whisk. And then you can add just a little bit of salt to this sauce. If you'd like, really you could do anything you want to this sauce. And just a couple of dashes of Tabasco to it. Because we've got a little, we're going to kind of alternate. We're going to have like a mild tortilla and a smoky black seasoned meat. Then we're going to have pickled tangy vegetables. And we'll have this little sauce on here that kind of pulls it all together. It's kind of the thread that ties it all together. It'll be creamy. It'll be chilled. But it'll have a little heat. We're going to have a little, a little nod to the pickled vegetables. Because we use a little of the liquid. I want this to be a little bit hot. My mouth is watering. Uh-uh. Uh. This smells so good. Okay. Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Delish. Okay. Let me check on our fish. We have our veggies are cooling. We have this fish that's hanging out. I'm going to check on this fish. We're going to flip it over. We have our cream sauce made. When we come back, we're going to toast these right over our open flame and build the most beautiful little plate of fish tacos you've ever seen. So good. This is cooking today. Hi, welcome back to Cooking Today. I just had a little bite of fish. Y'all, it's so delicious. We have made these beautiful blackened fish street tacos. We have seasoned and blackened some tilapia and just spent a couple minutes on each side and a skillet on the stove. No time whatsoever. And then it just flakes apart two forks. I didn't even have to barely pull it. It just kind of falls to pieces. And so you want it to be in some really good little bite-sized chunks. Then we pickle some cucumbers and some red onions with a little bit of garlic and some vinegar and sugar and all kinds of good stuff in there. And they are a chilled, vinegar-y, tart, tangy bite to just balance out all this heat in this spicy fish. Then we've made a little sauce. We have a little crumbled feta. You could do whatever crumbled cheese you want. You could do Monterey Jack, whatever cheese floats your boat. We have some cilantro. And then we have these little street tacos, these corn tortillas that are available at your grocery. And all I did was turn a flame on my stove and lay those down right over the flame. And just give them a minute with my tongs, flip them, come back. Easy as that. All we want to do is feel each of these little tacos with some meat. Gotta be able to fold them. Can't be so big that we can't get our good stuff inside. And then a couple of pickles that will cool that all off. And look, get these pretty, pretty, purpley pink onions in there. I like to do a little drizzle of sauce right over them. Can't have a street taco without being sloppy. That's the rule, right? Crumbled cheese, whatever floats your boat. And then a little sprinkle of fresh cilantro. Fold them up, pile them in a neat little container. Like this. Double up your little baby corn tortillas so that they don't get soaked and wet. And you've got the most beautiful little street taco. We're going to pile them up in this neat little plate. And I'm going to take a bite. This is cooking today. You