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.

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.)

We served this with some creamed barley with spinach from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, a cookbook which, incidentally, I highly recommend. I’ll try to put our take on that up soon, as it was very tasty as well.

And of course, check out how all the other members of Whisk Wednesdays fared!

P.S. Please excuse the continued crummy photos — Nikon is repairing our camera (it now says “In Shop” instead of “Estimate” — I think this is a good sign!), so we are down to using Matt’s iPhone. It’s marginally better than my camera-phone, but that’s not saying much! Hopefully in the next couple weeks our camera will be returned to us — knock on wood!

My younger brother, John, asked me a couple days ago for the address for our blog. I’m pretty excited when anyone shows interest in what we’re writing, and I’m also always trying to make the blog better and more usable, so I asked him for his input. The first response I got (via Google chat) was this:

1:15 PM John: ok

im real gald you put the carrot recipe up

im going to make a vat of them

Score! Something I wrote was actually helpful to someone else! I’m not just typing off into the ether! What else you got?

1:24 PM John: you need more entrees

that i can afford

1:25 PM i dont care what kind of experimentation you want to do i just need ideas for meals i can afford that taste real good and are real easy to make and are really cheap

if it doesnt fit that criteria then dont put it up

that is all

Ok, well that one’s a little more of a bummer. But, he makes a good point. (I should probably mention that my brother and I were taught from a young age to tease each other incessantly, so while that might come across as an insult to the untrained ear, to me it sounds like bother … err … brotherly love. And yes, I said taught — you know who you are.)

Anyway, I’m not going to stop my “experimentation,” but the idea of posting (and cooking/eating) more affordable, quick and easy meals sounds like a worthy goal to me. As a junior in college, I can certainly understand why John wants to do that, and it’s probably a good target for me, too, before I bankrupt us with my foodie habit.

Sooooo, I’m starting a new category called “Just for John” (though honestly, I’ll let anyone read it, even if you’re name isn’t John) that includes “meals i can afford that taste real good and are real easy to make and are really cheap.” And I’m going to try to add “and are reasonably healthy” to that list too, before someone starts thinking we should add French Bread pizzas or Cook Out to the category. I’ll also try to include an estimate of how much I spent on the groceries (per serving) and how much time it took to prepare.

The first installment will be this recipe for trout, inspired by recent recipes from Cooking Light and from The Wednesday Chef. We served it with creamed spinach, but in a hurry, just sauteed spinach or a salad would be good, too. The sauce is somewhat like that used in Chicken or Veal Piccatta. You could easily leave out the prosciutto for a crowd that doesn’t eat pork, or just to make things a bit healthier. If you’re really in a hurry, the fish is flavorful enough by itself you could even leave off the sauce entirely, in which case this meal takes no time at all to prepare.

Lemony Trout with Prosciutto, Caper, and Lemon

Sauce:
olive oil
1/4 c of finely chopped onion or shallots
a couple slices of prosciutto, pancetta, or bacon, chopped
juice from 1/2 a lemon
a couple forkfuls of capers

Fish:
whole boned trout, head and tail removed (depending on the size, 1 trout per 1-2 people; we were able to split a large one and had plenty of food)
1/2 lemon, sliced thinly
olive oil
salt and pepper

Preheat the broiler. Heat a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a small skillet over medium heat. Add the onions and saute until soft. Add the prosciutto and saute until it’s a little bit crispy. Add lemon juice and capers. Turn the heat down and simmer until most of the liquid is reduced away, and there’s just enough left to hold the sauce together a bit. Remove from heat and put the lid on to keep warm.

Brush the skin side of the fish with olive oil. Place on a greased broiler pan, or just a greased pan. Brush the inside of the fish with oil and season with salt and pepper. Stuff the inside of the fish with 3 or 4 slices of lemon and fold the fish closed. Broil about 4 minutes on a side, until the fish is opaque and flakes when tested with a fork. Open up the fish and top with the sauce.

Total time: about half an hour
Total cost:
(I forgot to save my receipt from Safeway, so I’m guessing on most of the produce, and probably overestimating)
Trout: $3.85
Lemon: $0.85
1/3 onion: $0.50
2 slices of prosciutto: $1
1 T capers: $0.50
1 bunch of spinach (for side dish): $2

Total: $8.70 for 2 servings, or $4.35 per meal