Sweet & Smoky Fish Tacos

Fish tacos live or die on contrast — warm flaky fish, cool crisp cabbage, a little heat, a little tang. What they often miss is crunch, and the usual fix is a heavy beer batter that masks the fish you went to the trouble of cooking well. We took a different route: a scatter of crushed Sweet & Smokey Pepper Mitten Chips right before serving. The chips give you the fried-taco crackle without the fryer, and their oak-smoked sweet pepper plays off a flaky white fish like cod or mahi instead of burying it. The smoke deepens the char on the tortilla, and the touch of sweetness lands right next to the lime and the chipotle mayo, so every bite has a little push and pull. The one rule is timing — add the chips at the very end, after the avocado and cilantro, so they hit the table still crunchy rather than softening into the cabbage. We keep the fish in large chunks for the same reason: you want texture you can feel. If you have mango around, a quick salsa leans into the sweet side of the chip and makes the whole plate taste like somewhere warmer than Michigan in May.