Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Tilapia with coconut rice

The funniest part about tonight's dinner was afterwards when we went downstairs to Melanie & Jeremy's and Brian was talking about how he could probably eat an entire loaf of pumpkin-chocolate chip tea bread in one sitting (he also gave a detailed description of what kind of cake-icing combinations he would or would not be capable of eating and how many rows of brownies). He explained that his entire dinner of "fish, rice and broccoli" was nowhere near a cake-like caloric intake and he had no difficulty polishing it off. I'm not sure what the point was, but I pointed out that he sounded like a spartan health hero when he said dinner was fish, rice & broccoli--he left out the part where I covered everything in coconut milk and butter. Anyway:

Rinsed about 1 ½ cups rice, added it to rice cooker and covered with most of a 16 ounce can of coconut milk, added 2 bouillon cubes and enough water to make 3 cups of liquid. Put it to steam in rice cooker. Before it was done, added chopped broccoli to the veggie steaming rack on top to eat alongside dinner. Rice cookers are great. They are a low-energy way of cooking both rice and vegetables (or shrimp or whatever) at the same time and also ensure that your rice will be perfectly cooked and kept warm at a safe holding temperature until you are ready for it (thereby minimizing risk of Bacillus cereus and accompanying sudden onset of nausea and vomiting). Anyway. Rice cookers. Nifty.

Sautéed 1 clove minced garlic in a couple chunks of butter until golden. Added 2 filets of tilapia, let cook about 2 minutes over medium-high heat, flipped to other side for 2 minutes, then sprinkled a pinch of red pepper flakes in the pan. Added rest of can of coconut milk (maybe ¼ cup) and ¼ cup of white wine. Let the mixture cook down around the fish for a minute or so, then sprinkled the top of the filets with 2 teaspoons chopped parsley, a pinch each of paprika & turmeric, salt & pepper. Let liquid boil down about 2 more minutes, then took off heat, slid the fish onto the coconut rice and poured the sauce over the top, with broccoli alongside. A better way to do this if you have a lot of liquid but don't want to overcook your fish is to remove just fish from heat, then aggressively cook down the sauce.

1 comment:

Angelica said...

AWESOME!! I love brian's comments.