Cooking Fail

First of all let me say that my recreational internet time has been more devoted to firearms than kittens recently. That being said, Thanks to the folks over at daily kitten, I had fish tacos on the brain on my way home last night. I didn't go with the recipe cited in the linked thread, but came up with my own recipe on the fly. I decided to do a piece of salmon fillet and a tuna steak, seared on each side and sliced. I was going to wrap them in tortillas with fresh spinach, tomato slices, avocado slices, and diced kalamata olives. This is not what happened.

We went to the store to buy the necessary ingredients. We bought a gorgeous salmon fillet and a beautiful tuna steak. They had some beautiful romas, and although I wanted to buy a smaller quantity of spinach, I contented myself to buy the full bag. We picked the ripest two avocados that we found in the bin and a bag of flour tortillas.

I put the skillet on the stove top to pre-heat it, as the range is a crappy, contractor model that has all of 32-BTU's. While it was heating, I started slicing my avocado. Much to my utter dismay, it was far from ripe. Jenni suggested that I place the rubbery slices in the skillet and maybe the heating would soften them. I had never tried this before. The only time I had cooked avocado previously was when we battered and deep-fried avocado wedges and dipped them in chocolate sauce (and that was freaking amazing). This sounded like a reasonable enough idea to me so I placed them in the skillet, and they quickly became blackened, rubbery, avocado slices.

I frustratedly speared the chunks on my chef knife (which was harder than it sounds) and placed them in the garbage, deciding that their sacrifice would not ruin dinner. I put the two slabs of fish in the skillet with some grapeseed oil. Why grapeseed oil? Grapeseed oil will not burn in a skillet like olive oil will - or so I've been told. Apparently, the 32-BTU's and the thick-bottomed skillet were able to produce enough heat to split atoms as the grapeseed oil immediately started burning and smoked up the entire house. When I got the fish out of the skillet and started slicing them, they were not seared. They were DONE.

I heated the tortillas, but was so flustered over the avocados, grapeseed oil, and fish that I completely forgot to pit and dice my olives. What should have been a very savory dinner turned out to be quite bland and uninteresting. It was pretty, but that doesn't really matter when the food HAS NO FLAVOR.

I still think that my recipe would have been quite delicious if I had followed it, but there wasn't enough left of the original concept once I was through. It was sustenance, and that was all. Next time, I'll prepare all of my veggies (olives included) prior to even heating the skillet. Also, I will use no oil of any kind, and rely on the oils in the fish to lubricate the skillet. It's a non-stick pan, and even if I have to do a little scraping afterward, it will more than justify avoiding the smoke throughout the house. Oh well. I know my next attempt will be better as it could not possibly get much worse.