Cooking for One: Walnut Crusted Tilapia

One of the reasons I love tilapia (besides the fact that I am a cheapskate) is that it is very mild, non-fishy, and goes well with lots of different flavors. If you typically don't love fish/seafood, you might wanna give tilapia a try and see what you think!

This recipe is a Stacy original that is tasty, easy to make, and crazy healthy. The tilapia is baked instead of fried, so you get that yummy crunch without all the extra oil. And walnuts are full of omega-3s! Not really sure what that means, but I hear it's good....

Ingredients:

1 tilapia fillet

3/4 cup crushed walnuts (buy pre-crushed or crush them yourself!)

2 tbsp. Italian seasoned bread crumbs

2 tbsp. parmesan cheese. Grate it yourself if you can, or just use the packaged kind from the grocery store.

1/2 cup tomato sauce. Use leftover pasta sauce if you'd like!

Bed of spinach:

2 big handfuls of spinach leaves, torn

1 tbsp. olive oil

1 tsp. minced garlic

Salt 'n Pepa to taste

Once again, just five ingredients! The bed of spinach is optional, but it's easy to whip up while the tilapia is baking and is a very nutritious side dish.

Directions:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil and spray with nonstick cooking spray. Makes clean-up super easy cause you can just throw away the foil after!

If your walnuts aren't pre-crushed, you can always crush your own nuts (that's what he said?) Put them in a Ziploc bag, CLOSE the bag so you don't get walnuts everywhere, and whack away with a rolling pin, heavy pan, or your forehead until they are nice and crushed.

Mix the crushed walnuts with the seasoned bread crumbs and parmesan cheese.

Put the tilapia fillet on the baking sheet and coat with the tomato sauce. This will help the crust stick to the fish, and it adds some healthy flavor!

Pour the dry walnut mixture over the fish, pressing down with a spoon if necessary so the walnuts really cling. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil to help the crust brown.

Pop that sucker in the oven for about 15 minutes, or until the fish is cooked through and the walnut crust is nice and toasty brown. How do you know when fish is done? It should be completely opaque and flake easily when you cut into it with a fork.

That's it! You now have Walnut Crusted Tilapia. If you would like to make a bed of spinach for it, here's how:

Heat a sautee pan to medium high heat. Pour in your olive oil (thanks to your handy dandy olive oil pourer thing!)

Tear up the spinach a bit and add it to the sautee pan. It may seem like a lot of spinach at first, but you will not BELIEVE the shrinkage that happens to spinach when you cook it!