There’s a taco place a few blocks away that has $1 tacos on Tuesday nights. I’ll eat and/or drink anything for a buck, but my first Taco Tuesday experience was also the last. Turns out a dollar doesn’t get you the usual high quality stuff.

I decided it was better to stay home and have my own Taco Tuesday, or more accurately put, Tostada Tuesday. There’s a little bit of assembly required, but you can make it happen while you wait for The Real Housewives of New Jersey to come on. (Yes, I watch it. Don’t judge me).

SHRIMP & CHORIZO TOSTADAS

Makes 4 loaded tostadas

For the Slaw:

1 (1-pound) bag coleslaw mix
1 tomato, seeded and chopped
1 onion, chopped (about 1 cup) *reserve half for beans
6 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
Salt and pepper

For the Beans:

1 (15.5-ounce) can black beans
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Salt and pepper
1 garlic clove, minced
2 teaspoons ketchup
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

For the Tostadas:

4 small (about 6″ in diameter) corn tortillas
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

6 ounces chorizo, casings removed and chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
8 ounces peeled and deveined shrimp

Garnishes:

Sour cream, hot sauce, avocado, pickled jalapeños, lime wedges

-In a large bowl, combine coleslaw mix, tomato, ½ of the chopped onion, and vinegar. Season to taste with salt and pepper, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate.

-Place a baking sheet on the center rack of the oven and preheat it to 400˚F.

-Place the beans in the bowl of a food processor. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add the remaining chopped onion and 1 teaspoon salt and cook, stirring, until onion is soft and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the minced garlic clove and continue cooking about 30 seconds. Remove skillet from heat and add onion mixture to food processor. Add ketchup and Worcestershire and pulse until beans are smooth. Transfer bean puree to the now empty skillet and cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened and darkened in color, about 10 minutes.

-Meanwhile, brush both sides of each tortilla with oil and carefully place on the heated baking sheet. Bake until crisp and golden, 8 to 10 minutes.

-In a separate large skillet, cook chorizo over medium-high heat until light golden, 3 to 5 minutes. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate. Increase heat to high, pat shrimp dry and season with salt and pepper. Add shrimp and minced garlic to skillet and cook until shrimp is opaque, 1 to 2 minutes per side. Trasnfer to plate.

-To assemble the tostadas: spread each toasted tortilla with beans, then top with shrimp, chorizo, and slaw. Garnish and serve.

I made an apple tart on Thursday and I felt a whole lot better about everything. Apple tarts are very soothing. They should change that well-known saying to “An apple tart a day keeps the doctor way.” Also, I’ve been interning at a catering company and worked my first event on Saturday night – all went smoothly and I have thus regained some confidence. Perfect timing, too, as I was swimming much too close to the deep end.

In other news, some of my classmates’ true colors have begun to shine through and they are not very flattering hues. Stereotypical tempestuous chefs in the making! Beware! Part of today’s assignment was to make fresh noodles certain pasta machines weren’t cooperating. One guy took this inanimate object’s offense quite personally and he became quite violent with it. One second the thing was attached to the counter and the next it was on the floor while its crank was in the hand of the raging perpetrator. Dismembered kitchen appliances. Oh the horror!

Speaking of horrors… The fish du jour was flounder and there were a couple extra leftover at the end of class so my partner was charged with filleting one of them. I was standing by and the gutting was going on as normal when all of a sudden a rather outsized “gut” was pulled out. It was quite unusual – larger than an egg sac and firmer. Filled with morbid curiosity, I asked my partner to “Just cut the thing open! Let’s see what’s inside!” It was the fish’s final repast! It was an actual whole fish inside the flounder! Like a man condemned to death, it had devoured one last meal! It was grotesque, now that I think about it. Too bad I didn’t have my camera today. I would have loved to share the gore with you.

It was Miss Scarlet, in the kitchen, with a knife.

I exaggerate. It was a lot less fraught than I’m making it out to be. But a live creature was in fact sacrificed and I wielded the weapon: Homarus americanus, aka, lobster. Did I feel bad? I’m sorry to admit that I did not feel an ounce of pity for the thing. I dug in the knife and that was that. Even now I’m thinking back to the moment and I got nothin’. Zip. Zero. Nada.

Anyway, the lobster cooking process was quite the production. I won’t even get into it because it’s ridiculous. It was also ridiculously delicious, but seriously, this is not something you want to try at home. Especially if stabbing something is too dastardly a deed for you to stomach.

Does shucking clams and oysters also count as murder? Because I did some of that, too. I’m a serial killer…

By the way, whomever was the first person to decide you could eat bivalve mollusks must have been famished because it was labor-intense work to pry those little suckers open. I managed a few blue points and two clams and decided that, like homarus up there, they’re better eaten in the comfort of a restaurant. Let someone else do the grunt work I say.

High Heels & Frijoles

My first few days at culinary school have been going swimmingly, but I do wish I had a little more of that back-to-school feel I used to get as a kid. I’ve been trying my utmost to get into the spirit by stocking my bag with the basic school supplies a second-grader would find appealing: highlighters, pens, notecards, etc. I seriously considered some magic markers, but decided against it. After all, I am in school to be a proper chef, not a master doodler.

However, there are certain parallels between grade-schoolers and cooks, the most notable one being that getting filthy is part of the job description. Early last week my fellow students and I were being instructed in the art of making fumet. Fumet is fish stock, and of course, requires the use of fish. If you’re imagining a hunchback named Igor stirring fish heads and tails as they boil and bubble over a tall stockpot you’ve got the right image in mind, but how do said heads and tails wind up in the pot? They must first be fished out of their water bath of course!

Step 1: Roll sleeve up. High. Almost to your armpit.
Step 2: Plunge arm into fishy, bloody, gunky water.
Step 3: Pull out fish body part.
Step 4: Do not rinse, but do repeat, until you have a nice pile of fish chunks.

It’s rather like bobbing for apples, really, the prize being a fish head. I didn’t get a head, sadly, and was glumly setting about the task of chopping my fish chunks into smaller bits when I heard a faint “eeeww!” — the sound I was hoping for: someone didn’t want their fishy head…because a fish head has fishy eyes…and those fishy eyes must be gouged out. I valiantly volunteered, and with firm will and hand, scooped out the googly eyeballs with my melon baller. Yes, dear reader, a melon baller is actually a fish-eye-scooper-outer. It’s just called a melon baller (fancy alias: parisienne scoop) because how would “Sadistic Tool to Gouge Out Dead Fish Eyes” read in a Williams Sonoma catalog?

High Heels & Frijoles