Baked Tilapia with Brown Rice

Last night I tried out another new recipe from Paula Deen's cookbook: The Deen Family Cookbook.  This recipe is Corrie's Lemony, Buttery Baked Fish (page 65).

I grew up North of Seattle Washington, and our family had a 20 foot boat and we would go fishing (it seems like every weekend) on Puget Sound for Salmon.  We didn't catch too many salmon, but we did catch just about everything else that lives in that body of water: red snapper, true cod, sea bass, flounder, rock fish, dog fish, sea plumes, even once a seagull, but that's another story.  I know that I would clean the fish and my mom would cook it up for us, though I don't remember much about how she cooked it.  Typically, my experience with cooking fish is barbequing salmon on my Weber grill and occasionally adding some shrimp.  Even though we are close to the ocean, the seafood available in the standard stores does not seem that fresh.  I have stayed away from cooking fish indoors due to the lack of adequate ventilation that would result in smelling up the house. 

Last week I had a nice lunch with some former co-workers and afterwards I checked out a fairly new seafood store that is close to the restaurant.  This market has a very good selection of fresh and frozen seafood.  One of my former managers was with me and said while the tilapia from this store looked good, that Costco offers both fresh and frozen tilapia.  This is what led me to Costco for my tilapia purchase.

This was a very easy recipe to make; it has seven ingredients including the fish.  I followed the recipe by lining one of my Bakers Secret cookie sheets with foil then laid out the three of the tilapia fillets on the foil, then I sprinkled on a mixture of salt, pepper, and garlic powder.  I made a mixture of butter, fresh lemon zest, and green onions that I spread over the fillets.  Then I put them in the smaller, bottom oven of our Electrolux oven for eleven minutes at 400 degrees.

My wife had already put some brown rice in our rice cooker and it finished about the same time as the fish.  We also had leftover corn and beans from the beef vegetable soup, so we reheated those to go with the fish.

It was a great meal.  I was very pleased with the results of cooking the fish this way.  It was very light and flakey and had a very mild flavor, the lemon and onions really enhanced the flavor.  As I started with good fish fillets, they didn't have the strong "old fish" smell or taste that can ruin a good fish dinner.

This is definitely a recipe that we will use again, perhaps soon when we have some company coming over for dinner.  I did see that Paula Deen also has a similar on-line recipe that uses lime instead of lemon, that also sounds delicious and I am looking forward to trying it.