Week 9: Coffee - Coffee rubbed grilled salmon tacos

 I really wanted to avoid baking something with coffee in it for this challenge. It seemed like the easy answer and let's face it, the more I bake, the more I eat it; I'm a sucker for sweets. We bought some awesome salmon at Costco a day or two before so it needed to be used. Thank goodness for Google.  I searched coffee and salmon and this great recipe came up!

First I created the rub for the salmon. It included freshly ground coffee with coriander and other spices(left) made liquidy with EVOO (right). 

Salmon from costo (left) with some pepper and parsley on it already.  I wiped most of that off and basted the salmon (right) on tinfoil so we could grill it .

While I worked on the salmon, Andrew prepared the brussel sprouts and brocolettes for grilling

I whipped up the very simple red cabbage, lime juice, and cilantro mixture and set it aside to marinate while I moved on to the guacamole.

It was entirely appropriate at this point in the cooking to crack open a bottle of wine.  This bottle was a gift from my Reddit Secret Santa in Montana (see my post about that here) and I've been saving it till I was able to properly savor it.  It was a fruity delicious red, so a big thanks to my SS!

The guac called for boiled tomatillos to be added to jalapeno, avocado, lime, and cilantro.  It was very basic but very delicious; reminiscent of the guac at Taco Lobo here in B'ham (which is uh-maze-ing!)

With the red cabbage slaw it really looked pretty.

Andrew perfectly grilled the fish, which is not too easy to do.  Well, it is easy to cook it, but it is equally easy to over cook it.  This salmon ended up flavorful and tender and not dry at all.  

Here is the finished plate.  I chose white corn tortillas but both Andrew and I felt the flavor was over powering to the somewhat subtle salmon coffee rub and we both ended up just eating the guts of the tacos by themselves with no tortilla.

SO much better.  Here is a perfectly composed bite:

Without the tortilla we could really taste the coffee in the rub and although we both felt a little wired afterward, it is most certainly something I would do again.