November 25, 2014 Sayulita Day 2 Lunch Jackal and Dinner Baked Red Snapper topped with Chorizo and Panko

November 25, 2014 Sayulita Day 2 Lunch Jackal and Dinner  Baked Red Snapper topped with Chorizo and Panko

We started the day by making an omelet of smoked tuna, machego cheese, and onions, topped with slices of avocado and eating it under the palapa by the beach with cups of honeysuckle tea.

Then we walked the three blocks to the town center and went to a new fish store and our old favorite grocery store.  The new fish store had large red snappers and fresh head on shrimp, so we said we would return.  We then bought string beans, a pineapple, two bananas, 1 kg. of sugar, and four squashes at the grocery store.  We still needed mint to make the sugar water for our mojitos, so we walked to the square to the super mini grocery store.  Amazingly, the lady who owned the store had a bag of fresh spearmint in the small refrigerator he kept beside the cash register and we bought a large handful for $.50. 

We walked around the square and down the other one way street back to the fish market, stopping to check out the Le Gourmet French Bakery and to buy two glasses of fresh squeezed orange juice just beyond the bridge.  Suzette picked the largest red snapper and we determined it was 85 peso per kilo (about $3.00/lb.).  We also bought 1 ½ lb. of heads on shrimp for about $5.00/lb. and then carried all of our provisions to the room. 

We had read Trip Adviser reviews of restaurants in Sayulita and fund that the highest rated restaurant was just across the street from the villas where we were staying, so after walking the beach to the main beachfront area and taking a short nap, we walked across the street at 2:30 for a late lunch.  We both ordered a seafood tostada for 30 pesos each ($2.35) to go. When we arrived the cooks in the kitchen were making a chorizo and potato dish for the staff’s lunch and I asked if I could try the dish.  

Soon we were brought a small plate filled with the chorizo and potatoes with a bowl of tostados and two types of salsa.  Tostados appear to be the all-purpose delivery system for chopped foods and salsas. They are thinner, more delicate and less oily than the typical chips in the states.  The chorizo is died red and imparts a red color to the grease, which colors the food.  When the tostados were delivered In a to go bag, we walked back across the street to the compound, grabbed two beers and walked to the palapa by the beach that has become our dining room and enjoyed our fresh tostados, with octopus, marlin, bay scallops, and shrimp in its appealing matrix of micro chopped cucumbers, tomatoes, cilantro, Serrano chili, and onions balanced delicately on a tostado with an extra tostado to spread out the pile of seafood salad.

We loved the dish and will return to El Jackal.

We fetched our cameras and went to sit on the veranda overlooking the beach and snapped pictures of the sunset.  Finally around 6:00 we noticed a group of people a ways up the beach where they incubate the sea turtle eggs and walked over to see if they were letting loose turtles.  We met a lady on the way who said the days release had just ended.  We were saddened that we missed the release and determined to see the next one, which is highlight of the trip usually.  

looking south earlier

looking north with Suzette

a panorama of the entire beach from southern to northern headlands

 a little later looking south

We went back to our condo unit and cooked dinner.  I chopped up about 2 oz. of chorizo, quartered three potatoes and minced about 1 Tbsp. of cilantro, while and Suzette snapped about 1/2 cup string beans and split one of the red snapper filets in half, sautéed the chorizo and piled it and some panko onto the filets and then broiled it in our tiny toaster oven for about twenty minutes. While the fish was baking Suzette boiled the string beans and then sautéed them with the potatoes, while I opened a bottle of Côtes de Provence rosé. 

For some reason, I had thought the wine was a Coteaux de Provence, which is usually a slightly sweet and fruity wine.  The Côtes de Provence was an entirely different animal; bone dry.  We were hungry for a good wine and did not mind that is was not perfect.  In fact the chorizo was not picante and so the dry wine went well with the fish to moisten the toasted panko and chorizo.  The fish could not have been fresher.  It still had that internal inter-cellular moisture of sea water, just like the seafood in the seafood tostado had had earlier.

another view of dinner

the ceiling of our dining room

red snapper with smashed potatoes and green beans

After returning from food shopping this morning I had cubed one of the bananas and eaten it with some yogurt and the banana was fabulous, because it seemed to be tree ripened.  

After dinner we made honeysuckle tea and heated the PPI brownie from yesterday’s pasta lunch and had a small dessert course to complete our meal.

One of the things I like the best about Sayulita is the availability of really fresh ingredients. Although limited, the ingredients that are available are plentiful, cheap and at their maximum freshness or ripeness.  Most people shop daily, so are used to freshness as the rule.  And sometimes we are surprised like today’s find of fresh mint.

We have enough food now for several meals. Tomorrow morning we will make a shrimp omelet and Oaxacan mole for dinner. The next day, Thanksgiving Day, we will make fish and shrimp soup for dinner.  After that perhaps one of our lunches will be BBQ tuna and shrimp on tostados.

In two days we are planning to take a boat ride to Yalapa for lobster on the beach for our Thanksgiving Dinner with a bottle of the Chenin Blanc champagne we bought in France last year.

Voila!

Bon Appétit