One New Recipe a Week, Please.

I am an amateur foodie. An only-one-year-of-cooking-experience-under-my-belt amateur foodie. And I'm crazy about trying new recipes.

My poor husband.

Nothing comforts him more -- well, nothing much comforts him more -- after a long day at work than a familiar, delicious home cooked meal. There are several meals that I make that comfort him in such a way:

• Cheesy Pasta with Chicken and Sun-Dried Tomatoes
• Simple, Perfect, Enchiladas!
• Tacos, Pico De Gallo, and Guacamole
• Chili Parmesan Chicken and Quinoa Salad

There are probably more, but not enough more that I don't get frequently bored cooking the same things over again. I'm ALWAYS searching for new recipes, new ideas, new ways of making things.

Meaning that lately, since I've had more time on my hands, new recipes make up the majority of the meals we've been eating. And more often than not, the new recipes turn out to be flops. Most of the time, because I accidentally did (or didn't do) something that ruined them, and some of the times, because the recipes were stupid to begin with, and I didn't have the experience with cooking required to recognize a flop when I saw it coming. Consequently, Brent had to come to me with a special request:

"Can we only try ONE new meal a week, please?"

How can I say no to my husband? We decided Saturdays will be our adventurous nights where I satisfy the longing inside me for experimenting with new tastes and such, and I think it would be appropriate to blog about our weekly adventures in this area.

I will say, only doing ONE new recipe a week sure makes meal planning and grocery list-compiling MUCH more simple tasks. Just much less fun.

The following is last Saturday's meal, with the recipe and our opinions of it included.

Tilapia and Quinoa With Feta and Cucumber

From the April 2010 edition of Food Everyday: A Martha Stewart Magazine

INGREDIENTS

1 cup quinoa

coarse salt and ground pepper

2 1/2 tsps extra-virgin olive oil

1 lb boneless, skinless tilapia fillets, divided into 8 pieces

3/4 tsp paprika

1 cup English cucumber, diced small

1/3 cup roughly chopped fresh dill

1/3 cup feta, crumbled

2 tsps lemon juice

In a small saucepan, bring quinoa, 2 cups water, and 1 tsp salt to a boil over high. Reduce to a medium simmer and cook until water evaporates, about 15 minutes. Transfer quinoa to a medium bowl and let cool 5 minutes.

In a large nonstick skillet, heat 1 1/2 tsps oil over medium high. Pat fish dry and season with salt and pepper; sprinkle with paprika. Cook fillets until opaque throughout, about 4 minutes, flipping halfway through. Stir cucumber, dill, feta, 1 tsp oil, and lemon juice into quinoa. Season with salt and pepper. Divide quinoa among four plates and top with fish.

THE VERDICT: For those who like quinoa, this is a really good recipe. I enjoyed it a lot, the flavors were really interesting and the texture of the fish with the quinoa was really pleasant. Brent really liked the tilapia, but keep reading to see the edits I made to cooking the fish. As for the quinoa mixture, he let me know that he just really doesn't like quinoa. That may confuse some of you, because, as I listed above, quinoa salad is one of his favorite meals that I make. Well, as it turns out, it is the ONLY quinoa dish that he likes. I've made quinoa in several different ways since we've been married, and he practically gags at all of them, except for the quinoa salad. The quinoa salad is so good that he requests it. I got the recipe from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. Anyway, the quinoa mixture for the tilapia recipe seemed similar enough to the salad I've been talking about that I was sure he would enjoy it. Nope, I was wrong.

Again, for those who like quinoa, this is a really good recipe.

Now, here are the changes I made when I cooked it:

1. Instead of boiling the quinoa in 2 cups of water, I used 1 cup water and 1 cup chicken stock. Only because I always have homemade chicken stock on hand and I like to incorporate it into our diets as much as possible. Well, ok, and I like the extra flavor it brings out in a dish.
2. Also, I just realized I didn't add any salt to the quinoa/chicken stock/water mixture.
3. I used half the amount of tilapia, but the same amount of oil. (Olive oil is good for you, k?)
4. I didn't use paprika. Only because I didn't have any. Maybe I should get some...my recipes have been calling for it lately. I just hate the prices of spices. No rhyme intended.
5. I deglazed my pan with lemon juice after removing the cooked tilapia fillets from it, and I added the deglazing juices and morsels to the tilapia. I think this is part of the reason why Brent liked the fish so much. I didn't do it because I'm a genius in the kitchen, instead I did it because I'm NOT a genius in kitchen. Whenever I fry fish, instead of frying all golden brown and beautiful, the fish sticks to the pan and when I flip it, the beautiful golden brown crispiness removes itself from the rest of the fish and stays put on the pan. I don't know how to fix this malady...I've done everything my dear friend Julia Child has advised. Ok maybe not everything, I may need to skim her instructions on fish again. Anyways, when I removed the cooked-through but still extremely-white-due-to-the-crispiness-being-stuck-to-the-pan fish to the serving plates, I was grieved that most of the flavor of the fish was still cooking and stuck to the pan. The only way I could get that flavor onto the fish was by deglazing. I could have used white wine, but I'm glad I chose lemon juice because it turned out DELICIOUS.

Enjoy!