Tilapia With Salted Black Beans

Dinner tonight is a Chinese fish dish.

Recipe:

Serves 6

6 Tilapia fillets
2 tbsp. Tausi or Fermented Black Beans
1 large green onion, julienned
3 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and julienned
2 inch piece of fresh Jalapeno, seeded and deveined, and julienned
1/2 cup corn starch

First, soak the black beans in approximately 1/4 cup water until soft and then drain.

Heat a heavy skillet and add approximately 1/4 cup of oil for frying fish. I used a combination of vegetable, olive and light sesame oil.

Fry fish which has been salted, pepped and coated lightly with cornstarch until golden.

Remove to a platter.

In the oil that is left in the skillet add the remaining ingredients and fry until all the vegetables are lightly brown. You may add a little water, approximately 1/4 cup if you would like a light sauce.

Pour over the fried fish and serve with white rice. I am serving Jasmine rice tonight.

Paella

Tonight I wanted to make something different with the frozen chicken thighs I had in the freezer. I remembered I hadn't used any of the Saffron I bought in New Jersey, in quite a while. I therefore hoped I had the ingredients to Paella.

I found a very good recipe for chicken paella. It can be found here

I made a few changes to the recipe because I wanted to use what I had at home and not go to the store for any extra ingredients (if I could help it).

- When the recipe calls for "bowl" I believe it refers to "cup" measurement.

- I found that frozen peas work better in this dish and they should be added at the last minute.

- Chicken broth works well in this dish and can be easily subsituted for meat broth (which I take to mean beef broth).

- I skipped the green and red peppers altogether because I simply did not have any. I used a little more garlic and onions instead.

- The recipe forgets to mention when the uncooked rice should be added. (BTW, I used 1 1/2 cups of rice instead of 2 cups and 3 cups of water), After I added the tomatoes (I used canned tomatoes), I added the rice.

I think that is it. My family really enjoyed this meal.

Oktoberfest

Every year my family sets aside one day in October to celebrate my husband's German side of the family. We had a wonderful celebration the other evening thanks to Barbara's Oktoberfest recipes at Bless us O Lord

Although, I wanted to duplicate all of her recipes for our menu, I wanted to use up what I had in the refrigerator, freezer or cupboards. Our menu therefore was a variation of hers.

Menu:

Pan fried Bratwurst on buns.

German potato salad (my variation was to use green onions instead of white onions. I substituted the green onions because I didn't have any parsley at home and I still wanted something green. I really enjoyed the taste of this potato salad.

Custard Pie. I found the recipe at Barbara's blog. We had more eggs in the refrigerator than we did apples. It came out really well too. I also made a homemade crust.

I skipped the Beer Bread because coincidentally, my friend made the Tastefully Simple recipe one that Barbara refers too and I didn't want to make it just yet.

So, thanks so much Barbara for sharing your menu with us!

Meatless Friday Menu

Tonight's menu was as follows:

Fiery Marinara Sauce and linguine (just add Red Pepper flakes to your favorite marinara sauce. I used Hunt's Roasted Tomatoes and one can of Hunt's tomato sauce.

Salmon Cakes

Fresh tomato slices with lemon vinaigrette

Lemon Bars