Tasty Tilapia

  In the past month we've been cooking up some DELICIOUS fish here in the Lawson household. I love all manner of fish and seafood, but for financial reasons, tilapia is the fish we eat most often. My only issue with tilapia is that sometimes it can seem a little boring. Early in our marriage Josh and I ate a lot of broiled or baked tilapia with rice and broccoli, or some other veggie on the side. Nutritious? Yes. Exciting? No. It was pretty bland.

  Anyway, these two recipes that I discovered on Pinterest and tried out recently have livened up our fish eating. Note: neither of these recipes call specifically for tilapia ... it's just the mild, white fish that is most easily and cheaply accessible to us. I should also mention that both of these recipes use a lot of cilantro and lemon. To me, fish, cilantro, and lemon taste like a Mexican beach fiesta; but if you don't like those things you probably shouldn't waste your time trying these out.

Skillet Fillets with Cilantro Butter
  This recipe was really quick to throw together and I prepared it as directed, with the exception of the ground red pepper, because I didn't have any. It was melt-in-your-mouth delicious, and we ate it with rice and the following fantastic cauliflower.

Roasted Cauliflower
  Oh my goodness. Roasting cauliflower this way blows any other way I've ever eaten cauliflower out of the water. It is SO tasty (an opinion I've never had about cauliflower in the past) - the only caution I would give is that the flavor is pretty garlicky. Josh and I really like garlic, but if you are garlic-shy, you may want to cut back a little on the amount that the recipe calls for.   

Epic Fish Tacos
  The title of this recipe is no joke. I made these for dinner last night and they were amazing. Josh and I both loved them and agreed that this is the best fish taco recipe I've ever tried out (bless the poor man's heart ... he has to put up with a lot of new recipe attempts because I love trying new things). Anyway, these fish tacos are fantastic. I used baby spinach instead of pea shoots or watercress, some pre-made guacamole I had in the freezer (and then added the other fresh stuff the recipe calls for to it) because my avocado wasn't ripe enough, lite sour cream instead of creme fraiche, and Pickapeppa sauce instead of hot sauce because it was all I had on hand. I had to make myself stop eating these because they were so delicious.

  When I try a new recipe I have my own little mental ranking system that I use to categorize it:

*Never Cook Again

*Cook Again, but only for family

(this usually means cheap & nutritious, but not tasty enough that I'd want to serve it to guests)

*Tasty Enough to Cook for Company

*Special Occasion

(this usually means it would be too expensive to cook for a large group, but delicious enough that I'd make it for a birthday or date night with Josh)

  All three of the above recipes fell into the most valued "Tasty Enough to Cook for Company" category, so I hope you'll give them a try!