I originally found this in an old Cooking Light magazine, and it’s become one of our go-to, easy meals, perfect for spring or summer.  It’s super fast and simple, but it’s delicious and elegant enough for company.  We most recently served it for an early birthday celebration for my mom.  You can easily substitute out the cilantro for whatever is in season or on hand, and I’m just thinking lime zest instead of lemon would be a tasty substitution as well; you could also use any mild fish instead of the tilapia.  It went great with the fresh peas we found at the farmer’s market.  Delicious, fresh, simple, and with tilapia, usually pretty inexpensive, too!

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My mom has cooked salmon this way for a long time, and I think she originally got the recipes from Stirring Performances, a cookbook from the Winston-Salem, NC Junior League.  It’s just so darn good that I really hardly ever cook salmon any other way.  Even better, it’s dead simple — rub with a little garlic and salt, squeeze some lime over, let it sit a bit, and throw it on the grill!  Or, if like us, you get ready to fire up the grill and find you’re out of charcoal, and stick it under the broiler instead.  (I think this is even easy enough to go in the Just for John category, at least if you can find the salmon on sale!)  We find it’s a little easier with salmon steaks (they hold up a bit better on the grill) but fillets work fine, too.

Tonight, we served it over the Sweet Potato Mash with Mint from Simply Recipes — delicious!  This was a really unusual combination of flavors — sweet potatoes, mint, cilantro, raw onion, and a touch of vanilla.  I know it sounds a bit odd, but I thought the vanilla especially really gave it a nice depth.  It was definitely on the sweet side — I added a touch of cayenne to balance it out, and next time, I think I’ll add a little more.  But the sharp flavors of the garlic and lime played nicely against the sweetness of the potatoes, and it ended up as a really good combination.  Could use another color to balance out the orange though!

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For this week’s Whisk Wednesdays post, it’s the last in our series on frying and sauteing, and it forced me to finally conquer my fear of deep frying. I almost backed out on this one. I’ve never tried deep frying, as I don’t have a fryer or a splatter screen or anything, and I’ve been sure I would splash hot oil all over myself and get a terrible burn. So I’m pretty proud of myself for trying this one — and pretty pleased with how it turned out. These were really delicious, and definitely worth making again!

We made these on a weeknight, so I wasn’t able to take my usual mise-en-place pictures. But here’s a summary of what we did. The shrimp were first marinated in olive oil, lemon juice, parsley, and salt and pepper. This definitely gave them more flavor than they would’ve if they were directly battered and fried. While the shrimp marinated, I made the batter. It included equal parts all purpose and potato flour (1 1/4 c each) and 1 T baking powder, combined with 3 T olive oil, salt, and 1 c cold water. These were combined, drizzled with oil to keep a crust from forming, and let rest for a while as the shrimp continued to marinate.

Right before getting ready to fry, I folded 3 beaten egg whites into the batter (which was more like dough until adding the egg whites). I think these helped to really lighten up the coating on the shrimp. The shrimp were then dipped in the batter and deep fried in 350 F oil.

I don’t know if it was the lightened batter, or the marinade, or what, but these came out deliciously crispy but not too greasy, despite all that oil. It reminded me a little bit of a tempura batter, especially since it seemed to kind of puff up as the shrimp cooked. In fact, since we had a bunch of extra batter, I ended up frying everything I could think of — some potato slices left over from the delicious potato pizza we had made again, and some mushrooms. The vegetables were almost as good as the shrimp. Overall, I’m really glad I decided to tackle deep frying — this cookbook curriculum is really teaching me new and useful skills, and getting me outside my comfort zone, in a good way!

Be sure to check out how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared — on the blogroll on the right. (Note: I’m a couple weeks behind, so if you check them out, they’re probably making something other than these shrimp.)

Can you believe it? I’m actually on time for a Whisk Wednesdays post! We’ve now moved on to a section on frying/sautéing. I think last week was the first time I intentionally decided to skip a recipe — we were supposed to make deep fried whiting, and I’m just terrified of deep frying. I don’t have a deep fryer or a scatterscreen, and I just know I will end up with hot oil all over myself and my kitchen. (I meant to post one of my backlog of cooked-but-not-up-on-the-blog-assignments, but as seems to be happening a lot lately, things got away from me.) Anyway, I’m glad to be back this week for Sole Belle Meunière.

According to Le Cordon Bleu at Home, this translates literally to “sole cooked the way the beautiful miller’s wife cooks it,” which basically means floured and fried. It’s served with sautéed mushrooms, and a nut-brown butter sauce, with a bit of lemon juice added to the sauce to perk it up.

I think this was by far the fastest LCB recipe I’ve made yet, and I think I only slightly cheated by using one pan! (Of course, it was shortened also by the fact that I bought sole fillets instead of buying whole sole — which I don’t think I could’ve found anyway — and filleting it myself.) The fish was pretty simple, but it got a nice crispy crust from the flour, and of course, all the butter and the light lemony-ness added to it. The brown butter sauce and sautéed mushrooms made this feel fancy, but it was actually a pretty quick meal — a great way to have a nice meal during the week and still sit down to the table before 9. (Ok, I admit we barely made that cutoff tonight but still — you get the idea.)

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So in order to balance out my recent attempt at cooking more simply, I decided to join another blogging event! This one is hosted by Shari at Whisk and is called Whisk Wednesdays. I’m joining late, but they have been cooking through the lessons in Le Cordon Bleu at Home, which includes an entire cooking school curriculum. As I said, I’ve come in several lessons into the process, so I may also be playing catch-up while I try to keep up with the recipes everyone else is on as well.

They’ve just started a new chapter on soups, and this week’s “assignment” was Billy Bi, or Mussel Soup. I’m not sharing the recipe here; for that you’ll have to buy the book. (Mine’s still in the mail, by the way, so thanks go to Kayte for typing up the recipe for me while I wait.) The pictures below give you an idea of what the process of making this soup was like. (Unfortunately, my camera battery died as I was downloading the picture of the finished soup, so I’ll fill that in tomorrow)

I will say, the final product was absolutely delicious. The soup was rich, but somehow not overly heavy at the same time. It was creamy, but still pretty thin, so even though it’s summertime, it wasn’t too heavy to eat. The mussels are cooked in the broth, and then some of them are simmered further to flavor the broth (but removed since the meat is overcooked), helping to give the soup it’s rich flavor. I hope we have this much success every week!

Now, go to Shari’s list and check out how everyone else fared!