Poissoning Myself

I'm not much of a cook, really. I know. ||_|

But, I'm Catholic, it's Lent, and I've given up eating dinner alone in restaurants for Lent, so I've got to figure out a way to do fish.

• I've had my tuna salad sandwiches.
• I've had my fish sticks.
• I've had my smoked salmon that I just needed to heat up.

Face facts: it's time to cook.

I'd picked up some individually vacuum packed tilapia fillets at Dominick's (Safeway) the other day, so this morning (Friday), I moved two of those buggers up to the fridge to thaw.

Over my lunch hour, I Googled a recipe, and came up with THIS ONE on RecipeZaar: Tangy Pan Fried Tilapia.

It had every thing I was looking for:

• Easy – I don't cook much. Baby steps here.
• Easy – Don't give me 300 ingredients all from obscure 3 world countries that I cannot find locally.
• Easy – I don't want to dirty every utensil I own making the damn thing.

Tangy Pan Fried Tilapia
(modified slightly from the original)

Ingredients

2 Tilapia fillets

1 cup Progresso Italian Style Bread Crumbs

3 tablespoons Inglehoffer's Traditional Dijon Mustard

1/4 cup olive oil

salt and pepper

Tools

Large non-stick frying pan.

Kitchen tongs.

Large flat bowl for bread crumbs

Plate to hold fillets before cooking

Fork to spread mustard on fillets

1 cup dry measure

1 cup liquid measure

Directions

1. Remove fillets from plastic
2. Coat tilapia fillets in Dijon mustard.
3. Dip in bread crumbs to coat.
4. Heat oil in skillet on med / high
5. Pan fry fillets about 2 – 3 minutes per side. Flip only once
6. Remove from pan
7. Salt & Pepper to taste.

Review

Not bad. A solid B. I wouldn't know tilapia from orange roughy* if it bit me on the ass, but for my first stab at it, I certainly didn't poisson** myself. I matched it with a little green salad and a glass of rosé, and had a nice meal.

As a mustard lover, I was surprised that I could only detect the slightest hint of mustard. Maybe I should have gone with a zestier mustard? Next time I will probably add some cayanne pepper in with the bread crumbs and a dash or two of Frank Red Hot afterwards to spice it up.

And since I'm a blogger, and this is what we do, here's a video without creepy animated people…

* "Orange Roughy" always makes me think of the description of a painful and shocking poop. Like you see someone come walking out of the bathroom all ginger like, and they say, "Orange Roughy" as way of explanation. And now you will have that association in your head for the rest of your natural life, too!

** It's a French joke! MJenks isn't the only one who can make language jokes! "Poisson" = "Fish" and "Poison" = "Something deadly you ingest."