What's for Dinner Tonight?: Skinny Lemon Tilapia
What a gorgeous day here in Kansas City!! 70 degrees in the February, I'm soooo ready for spring, but know that more than likely we will have one more snow before winter is officially over. Fingers crossed that the weather holds!
It was so nice today that it put me in the mood for some spring cleaning. So, before I started cooking for the day, I did some deep cleaning in the kitchen. Wiped out the fridge, all the countertops and cleaned out one cupboard that has been a thorn in my side for some time. My son ran two loads of dishes in the dishwasher for me while I was doing all of that, so by the time I was ready to start cooking everything was perfect!
For dinner tonight we had crab cakes as an appetizer. I made an aioli sauce to go with them that I'll cover in a separate post. The main course was Skinny Lemon Tilapia. I served it with Mushroom Orzo (to be posted) and steamed asparagus.
I'm quite pleased with my seafood experiment. I really never thought that I would ever enjoy seafood as much as I do. I think that if I continue to wean my way onto it I could be really successful at adding it to my diet regularly.
This dish was really good. Very lemony with a hint of dill and my husband said it was cooked perfectly (high praise from him!)! Everyone loved it!
Skinny Lemon Tilapia, courtesy of Skinny Mom on Pinterest
Ingredients:
4 (6 ounce) tilapia fillets
salt, to taste
black pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon lemon peel seasoning
2 tablespoons light butter, melted
Juice of 1 lemon (about 2 tablespoons)
2 tablespoons fresh dill, chopped
Sauce:
2 ounces 1/3 less fat cream cheese
Juice of 2 lemons (about 4 tablespoons)
1 teaspoon lemon zest
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and line a baking sheet with foil and nonstick cooking spray, or a large oven safe skillet.
Season each fillet with salt and black pepper to taste. Sprinkle the lemon peel seasoning evenly on each fillet, then brush with the melted butter, squeeze of lemon, and sprinkle 1 tablespoon of the chopped dill over each fillet.
Bake for 14-16 minutes or until the fish is opaque and the flesh flakes easily with a fork.
While the fish is baking, make the sauce: In a small microwave safe bowl, soften the cream cheese 30 seconds at a time until very soft.
Stir in the lemon juice, the remaining 1 tablespoon of chopped dill, and lemon zest into the melted cream cheese.
Evenly divide the sauce between the fillets and serve hot.
Notes:
This was really easy to make and packed full of flavor. I probably went a little overboard on the dill and lemon, but those seem to be a theme for me today in all of my cooking. I used real lemon zest instead of the lemon peel seasoning, seeing as how I had lemons on hand. Of course I didn't read the recipe completely while I was cooking (surprise) and didn't melt the cream cheese correctly. Mine turned out really lumpy and almost coddled looking. It looked like cottage cheese, but tasted surprisingly good. My husband used the leftover aioli from the crab cakes, the boy used cocktail sauce (the heathen). I will definitely make this again and promise to read the recipe completely next time before I start cooking.
