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!

Tilapia with Cilantro Butter

Adapted from Cooking Light

4 fillets of tilapia
1 t cumin
1/2 t cayenne pepper
4 T butter, softened
4 T cilantro, finely chopped
1 lemon
1/2 t paprika
salt
cooking spray

Into the butter, mix in the cilantro, the zest from the lemon, the paprika, and a sprinkling of salt. Set aside.

Sprinkle the tilapia on both sides with cumin and cayenne pepper. (The amounts I give are approximate; I just give a few good shakes of cumin and a bit of cayenne.) Preheat a large skillet or griddle over medium high heat. Spray the griddle and both sides of the fish with cooking spray. Cook over medium high, about 4 minutes per side, until fish turns opaque and flakes easily with a fork. Resist the urge to move it around as it cooks, or the tilapia will completely fall apart.

Squirt lemon juice over the fish, and serve with the cilantro butter.

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!

Grilled Salmon

from Stirring Performances

4 salmon steaks or fillets
3 cloves of garlic
1 T salt
1-2 limes
Rosemary stems (optional)

Mix the garlic and salt, in about equal parts, into a paste. Rub on both sides of the fish. Squeeze lime juice over. Let sit about 2 hours (if you have time; it’s better if you let it sit, but not essential). Grill or broil, about 4 minutes per side. The originally recipe calls for throwing a few stems of rosemary over the coals when you put the salmon on. We’ve never actually tried it, but I expect it would be delicious.

Serves 4.

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.)