Fishy Friday: Pecan-Crusted Tilapia with Brandy Butter Sauce

Welcome to my annual recipe crush. Each February I choose a theme, and provide one or two recipes each day for the whole month. This year the theme is Weekly Menu Planning. What are the categories, you ask? We have Sunday Special, Meatless Monday, Taco Tuesday, Worldly Wednesday, Thrifty Thursday, Fishy Friday, and Celebrate Saturday.

We are trying to eat more fish, like many Americans, and we want to have some variety in how we eat it. This nutty, baked mild white fish recipe is one of the ways we’re doing that.

If you haven’t tried tilapia, this recipe is one way to eat it. Tilapia is a mild white freshwater fish. It is the fourth most consumed fish in the U.S. We sometimes eat it baked with an olive oil and tarragon rub for a simple and easy dinner. This pecan-crusted recipe is a bit more time-consuming but not by much. This recipe is really easy but a bit messy. However, DH thinks the mess is worth it, and he’s the one who does the clean-up.

Pecan-Crusted Tilapia (serves 4)

½ cup all-purpose flour, more as needed

2 eggs, beaten

1 cup crushed pecans

3 teaspoon crushed dried rosemary (see NOTE)

1 teaspoon salt

black pepper to taste

16 ounces tilapia fillets

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray.

Mix pecans, rosemary, salt, and black pepper in a shallow dish.

On separate shallow plates, place flour, beaten eggs, and pecan mixture.

Dip tilapia fillets in flour and shake off excess; dip fish into beaten egg, then into seasoned pecans, lightly pressing pecan coating onto fish.

Arrange fillets on the prepared baking sheet.

Bake in preheated oven until fish flakes easily with a fork, 12 to 15 minutes. Serve with Brandy Butter Sauce.

Brandy Butter Sauce (serves 4)

2 tablespoons butter

2 ounces brandy

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Melt butter over medium low heat.

Add Worcestershire sauce and brandy. Whisk to blend thoroughly.

Cook sauce for three minutes then spoon over pecan-crusted tilapia.

NOTE: You can season this dish with herbs or spices other than rosemary. Tarragon, fennel, dill, oregano, basil and others go well with fish. Changing seasonings make the same dish seem like a different one!

DH’s Rating: 5 Tongues Up

“I think this is really good. What did you think of it?” Oh, goody! Another way I can serve fish. I’m always on the lookout.

Fishy Friday: Pasta with White Clam Sauce

Welcome to my annual recipe crush. Each February I choose a theme, and provide one or two recipes each day for the whole month. This year the theme is Weekly Menu Planning. What are the categories, you ask? We have Sunday Special, Meatless Monday, Taco Tuesday, Worldly Wednesday, Thrifty Thursday, Fishy Friday, and Celebrate Saturday.

I dearly love pasta in all its shapes and forms, and so we eat a lot of it. I always cook more pasta than we need for a specific recipe so that I can use the extra as a side dish tossed with Brown Butter Sage sauce on its own, or with leftover marinara for a quick lunch, or sautéed with butter, green onions, and basil as a side with chicken.

Serving pasta, linguine or spaghetti, with white clam sauce goes back to our early days of marriage when I discovered he liked the same fishy taste I liked!

Here’s what I make every other month or so for Fishy Friday.

Pasta with White Clam Sauce (serves 4)

8 ounces linguine or spaghetti (angel hair cooks really fast)

4 garlic cloves, mined

4 tablespoons olive oil, divided

2 tablespoons flour

8 ounces bottled clam juice

½ teaspoon dried red pepper flakes

2 cans chopped clams

½ cup white wine

¾ cup chopped fresh basil

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

Parsley and Asiago cheese for topping (optional)

Prepare pasta according to directions to al dente. Drain and keep warm until ready to serve.

Saute garlic in 2 tablespoons oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Cook for about one minute. Do not brown the garlic, just soften it. Remove from pan.

In the skillet make a roux with the remaining oil and flour. Whisk constantly, for 3-5 minutes until the flour loses its raw smell and is a thick paste.

Immediately add clam juice, red pepper flakes, and garlic, whisking to combine. Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer for about 3 minutes.

Add clams, wine, basil, and lemon juice. Cook for 3-4 minutes.

Add in warm pasta and toss to coat. Serve immediately with parsley and Asiago cheese, if desired. We also have a simple Caesar salad and garlic bread to sop up the juice.

DH’s Rating: 5 Tongues Up

He always says something like, “Oh, good! Clam sauce!” This dinner is a favorite, not just because it’s delicious, but cooking the pasta takes the longest, so dinner is on the table very quickly.

Intro to February Month-of Recipes

Welcome to my annual recipe crush. Each February I choose a theme, and provide one or two recipes each day for the whole month. It gets exhausting, so that’s why I picked the shortest month!

Each year I go into my file of possible themes for this month and choose one. It was a no-brainer this year. Every family cook—man or woman—whom I know, struggles with putting meal after meal on the table day after day, week after week, and month after month. Me, too!

Working full time and being the main cooker for the family stretches your creativity, right? That’s when it hit me. One way to not just survive but thrive in meal prep is to systematize it. That’s my go-to for most areas of my life, so why not cooking family dinners? This month is inspired by a women’s magazine I used to subscribe to. It had a monthly menu, something new each night, so that, were I to choose to use it, I never had to wonder “What’s for dinner?”

I’d make the grocery list for the week and cooked the foods they described and gave recipes for. Did I do it each night? Nope, but often enough at one period in my life so that the stress of “what’s for dinner ?” was off my plate, so to speak. I carried that on later to planning our camping meals (no Safeway nearby; we had to pack it in) or for extended family/friend visits. Even now, I make weekly menus to take advantage of leftovers and to vary our meals.

What if you had some tried and true recipes that you simply rotated on a regular schedule and added on a focus for each day so nobody has to ask what’s for dinner? This is “Taco Tuesday” or “Fishy Friday.” With one or two recipes from here each day, you’ll have a month of rotatable recipes. And your family will know what to expect.

So here’s the plan. I will provide you with at least one recipe each day in a category. By the end of the month, you can make a calendar for the month of different recipes. With your own family favorites and the inevitable leftovers, I’ll bet you could stretch it to two months.

You might even make one Friday a month, a take-out or order-in dinner. Then, with your plan in front of you, you just cook away each day. By the end of two months, you start over, repeating the recipes from the beginning. That way, with the distance between dishes, your family will never again ask, “Spaghetti again?”

You’ll notice many of the recipes are “thrifty” or “worldly” (ethnic) or “fishy” despite the category I assigned them to on the blog. That means you can move them around to give even more flexibility.

What are the categories, you ask? We have Sunday Special, Meatless Monday, Taco Tuesday, Worldly Wednesday, Thrifty Thursday, Fishy Friday, and Celebrate Saturday.

Come back on the first of February, and we’ll begin our Month-of-Easier Meals. Well, the easier planning of them, anyway. And you know me, they will be easy. I don’t cook hard!

Facebook post: Looking for quick, easy recipe ideas your family will eat? Check out the Month-of-Easier meals by Sharon Arthur Moore at “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” http://bit.ly/2Dwraep

Twitter post: Looking for quick, easy recipe ideas your family will eat? Check out the Month-of-Easier meals by @ Good2Tweat at “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” http://bit.ly/2Dwraep