Taste Buds: Baked Southwestern Tilapia

Well, because Kam’s contributions are always in this fabulous presentation, I needed to step up my game with my Taste Buds entries aslo LOL! And really, I love taking pictures of food, I just get lazy transferring from an SD card to my computer, so I resort to my camera phone and call it a day. But, since I’ve been finding an excuse to take pictures with my new D90, Taste Buds was a perfect opportunity.

This recipe was from the Epicurious app. Really, the spices make the recipe. The recipe called for one teaspoon each of garlic powder, chili powder, salt, 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper and 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, all mixed together with 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil and sprinkled over tilapia fillets.

I never really measure my spices, I just look at them (which is weird that I don’t especially cuz I work in a lab). Instead of garlic powder, I used lemon garlic, and I also went heavier than 1/4 teaspoon cayenne peppers. Just to add more pop, I also added chili flakes. And, so that I’ll have green spices somewhere, and to lighten it a bit, I added dill. I didn’t just quite sprinkle either. I got my hands dirty and coated each fillet with my spicy mix. Then I just popped it in a pre-heated oven at 450°F for about 10 minutes. And, voila. Lunch! Very very easy that it gave me an opportunity to gloat at Chef for having a meal done in less than 30 minutes, and that even included washing the dishes! Chef was greatly impressed with this dish, which is always great with his very discerning palate.

On the side is a mixture of brown rice and white rice, which was really good to balance the heat of the fish.

Tilapia