Mexican Fish Fajitas with Broad Bean Salsa

I can’t remember how we came up with the idea, but we decided to try making fish fajitas and see how they turned out. We have made chicken or beef fajitas many times but never tried anything like that with fish. Kerri was back late from work, so that meant I had some time to potter around the kitchen and try various things. One of those things ended up being broad bean salsa.

The fish was a whole whiting which I rubbed with chilli powder, ground cumin, salt, lime juice and oil and stuffed with coriander leaves before roasting in the oven. I also made pretty standard guacamole using our usual sort of recipe. Then the broad bean “salsa” which was an experiment that turned out rather well:

broad beans (however many seems appropriate)

half a red chilli, finely chopped

half a red onion, finely chopped

lime juice

olive oil

salt and pepper

Pod the broad beans, then boil them until just done, wait for them to cool and skin them. Skinning them can take a while (especially after you’ve probably spent ages podding them!) but does make them nice and green instead of greyish and makes them a lot nicer to eat without the slightly tough skin. Then simply mix the broad beans with the chilli and onion, adding enough lime juice, olive oil, salt and pepper until it is well balanced and flavourful. Taste as you go a lot of course.

We also roasted some sliced red pepper and red onion. So it wasn’t a real fajita where everything is stir fried quickly – we roasted everything in the oven – but the end result was similar. We flaked the fish off the bone once it had cooked and made up the wraps with the fish, some roasted vegetables, guacamole and some of the broad bean salsa.

The texture of the fish worked very well, softer obviously than chicken or beef and a lot easier to eat. The flavour of it was good too, with the taste of the rub coming through well and combining well with the guacamole and roasted vegetables. The broad bean salsa was a very successful experiment and we’ll probably try a few more variations on that theme before the season is over.