Easy Fish Recipe and Hallelujah!

Hi everyone. I had a fabulous dinner experience tonight; my 7 year old asked for more fish! Yes, the pickiest of the picky children wanted 3 helpings! What makes this so ultra gratifying is that I secretly breaded the fish with a combination of healthy ingredients and did not even fry it.

It just goes to show that if we continue presenting our kids with healthy options, eventually, they may try something new and actually like it.

We used to eat a lot of the Trader Joe’s fish sticks which are still pretty healthy and when we ran out of the homemade fish tonight, my daughter said, “can’t you just take some more out of the box?”. I must admit that I felt pretty darn good being able to tell her they were homemade (I was a bit scared she would spit them out after hearing that, but she didn’t).

Anyway, here’s the recipe and I hope you may get inspired to keep at the home cooking thing-it may just pay off one day!

2 6-7 oz. filets of Tilapia or other fish, rinsed and dried with paper towels and put on a plate, preferably covered with wax paper or parchment paper (Buy wax and parchment paper if you don’t already have it-it is sold in any supermarket).
1 cup oatmeal
1 cup pecans
1/2 cup bread crumbs, preferably whole wheat (they sell whole wheat ones at Whole Foods)
1 egg
olive oil or canola oil spray (if you don’t have this, BUY IT!!!No excuses!)
salt to taste

In a food processor or mortar and pestle (if you have the arm strength), pulverize the pecans and oatmeal until they are like fine crumbs. Then add the breadcrumbs, add a pinch of salt, mix to combine and set aside in a bowl.

In a separate shallow bowl, beat the egg and set aside.

In another bowl add 1/2 of the bread crumb, pecan oatmeal mixture (you will save the rest for another time or if you need more for this recipe).

Take the fish, dunk in egg mixture and then coat in breadcrumb mixture and put back on the fish plate. If you run low on breadcrumb mixture, add some more but don’t pour it all in the bowl because if you don’t end up using it all, you will waste it since it will have touched raw eggs and you will need to then throw it out. Save the leftover crumb mixture in a tupperware or ziploc in the frige for another use later in the week or next week.

You can leave the fish like this in the fridge until you are ready to use later. This will allow you to not be crazed come dinner time and you will only have to cook it and not prepare it.

When you are ready to cook it, spray with oil on both sides and preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a frying pan, preferably one that can go in the oven and the stovetop, heat up a little olive or canola oil and brown fish for a couple of minutes on each side and then transfer to the oven. If your frying pan can’t go in the oven, just carefully transfer to an ovenproof dish which you can even line with that parchment paper you just bought!

Bake until fish starts looking crispy brown, approx. 20 minutes or so but just keep checking until it looks golden-ish. Serve with any sauce you like. We ate it with my cilantro sauce from an earlier blog post and my kids ate it with ketchup.

Please write in comments if you have questions or felt overwhelmed by this recipe. I want your feedback!
Enjoy!

You can also make chicken and tofu with this healthy breadcrumb mixture.