John had to go to a work dinner the other night, so I was stuck at home making, uh, anything whatever I wanted to eat, with no regard for the taste buds of others.

At the store, grape tomatoes were on sale. So, ok. Grape tomatoes are really the only kind that retain any sort of flavor in, around, or near winter. I've been eating a lot of them for lunch, dipped in hummus with mushrooms and red pepper sticks, or cut up and stuck on leftover pizza with chopped lettuce. It works shockingly well to make cold pizza palatable. In this circumstance, however, I was at home, with access to a stove. So I decided to reduce my tomatoes with onion to make sweet, savory salsa, then glop them all over a batch of tacos.

I made fish tacos, since I had a lot of fish but no soaked and boiled black beans. Any kind of bean would clearly be great with this salsa, though: just mash and refry them with some onion, garlic, and cumin. Awesome! Or you could make black beans And fish for double trouble.

Fish tacos with tomato-onion salsa

olive or tasteless oil
grape tomatoes
a medium yellow onion
green cabbage
tortillas
whitefish filet (tilapia)
salt, pepper, maybe some lemon

Make salsa; chop cabbage; sear fish; assemble.

Warm some olive oil on medium low in a saute pan while you peel and dice a yellow onion. Probably any kind of storage onion would work fine as well. Now I want to try red onion, since red onion is delicious.

Throw the onion in the pan, stir to coat with oil, and let it cook while you wash and halve a bunch of grape tomatoes. I probably used something like twelve or fourteen of them. Throw them in the pan with the onion, stir again, and let everything cook slowly together. The tomatoes and onions will collapse together into a delicious vegetable mass.

While your salsa is cooking, chop a bunch of cabbage into fine shreds. Also, if you have frozen fish, get it out and defrost it in warm water. Warm tortillas in a foil packet in the oven. I used three 6 inch flour tortillas for this amount.

When the salsa is done, it's time to sear fish. Heat a nonstick pan on medium high for a few minutes. Add a little olive oil or butter, tilt to coat the pan, and lay in your piece of fish. It should sizzle. Salt and pepper the top of the filet while you wait patiently for the bottom to cook. After about three minutes, check for golden crust. Flip and cook another two to three minutes, or until the fish flakes with a fork.

Fill each tortilla with chunks of fish (or beans), lots of salsa, and cabbage. Squeeze some lemon over each one if you are so inclined.

Eat them hard.