Tuesday Night Dinner: Roasted Tilapia with Potatoes and Lemons

For Tuesday night dinner last week, I found a really simple but tasty looking recipe in the October issue of Real Simple. I am a huge fan of this magazine. It always has really handy tips, excellent personal interest stories, and delicious but simple recipes. For instance, this roasted tilapia I made for dinner. This was probably one of the easiest meals I've thrown together. It all goes in the oven, and you just need to give it time to bake. I served it with some sauteed green beans and steamed broccoli and squash on the side, but you could just as easily throw together a nice green salad to serve on the side.

Roasted Tilapia with Potatoes and Lemons (from Real Simple)
1 pound red potatoes, halved
1 lemon, thinly sliced
8 sprigs fresh thyme
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon olive oil
kosher salt and black pepper
1/2 cup pitted kalamata olives
4 6-oz skinless tilapia filets
1/2 teaspoon of paprika

Heat oven to 400 degrees. On a large rimmed baking sheet, toss the potatoes, lemon, thyme, 2 tablespoons of oil, and 1/4 teaspoon each salt and pepper. Arrange in a single layer. Roast, tossing once, until the potatoes begin to soften, about 20 minutes.
Toss the olives with the potato mixture; nestle the fish in it. Drizzle the fish with the remaining oil and season with paprika and 1/4 teaspoon salt and pepper.
Continue to roast until the potatoes are golden brown and crisp and the fish is opaque throughout, 12 to 15 minutes.

Tuesday Night Dinner

A Tuesday night dinner collage


Salad of spinach, broccoli slaw mix, shredded carrots, cucumbers and tomatoes.


homemade garlic bread


Spaghetti noodles tossed with garlic, diced tomatoes, and zucchini.


Baked tilapia with lemon and dill


Garlicky Baked Shrimp

Tilapia with Lemon and Dill

So this week my friend Katy came in to visit us. Katy, like my roommate, doesn't eat meat, but does eat seafood. My sister, who also lives with me, doesn't eat shrimp. Fish then is one of the more affordable lean proteins we can all agree on. I found this recipe for tilapia with lemon and dill over at For the Love of Cooking. It's delicious. And really so easy to throw together. I recommend serving it with a side of roasted asparagus for a light meal.

Tilapia with Lemon and Dill (from For the Love of Cooking)
three tilapia fillets
2-3 cloves of minced garlic
a few sprigs of torn dill
a tsp or two of lemon zest
2 tbsp olive oil

Combine the above ingredients and marinate the fish for 2-4 hours. (Due to time constraints, I only marinated for about an hour and I thought it was fine.)

Juice two lemons and after marinating, add the lemon juice to the fish fillets. In a glass dish sprayed with cooking spray, place the fillets and pour the lemon juice over them. Add a few more sprigs of torn dill and place a thick pat of butter on top of each fillet and season with sea salt and cracked black pepper. Cover the dish with tinfoil and bake in the oven at 450 degrees for about 15 minutes, until fish is flaky.