Friday, October 12, 2012

One filling, two meats, and three happy eaters

Last week, I decided to pull out one of those giant frozen bags of fish that Aaron's dad bought a couple weeks ago. I'd been procrastinating because it was a bag of tilapia, which isn't exactly my favorite fish, and I am always reluctant to cook things I won't enjoy. In an effort to find something more appealing to do with the tilapia, I found a recipe online (Pinterest again) that I was actually excited to try. It's a Broccoli-Stuffed Sole (though, obviously, I made substitutions right off the bat).

The filling is delicious, made with chive & onion cream cheese, broccoli, stuffing, and Parmesan cheese. The sauce is more chive & onion cream cheese, with a tiny bit of white wine and milk.

When I tried to wrap the tilapia around the filling, I will admit to having difficulty. The filets, while thin, were not long enough to comfortably wrap around a good spoonful of the filling.

The finished product was very good, especially with a side of yellow rice (that recipe has been passed down in my family for years, and is much more about taste than portions) and green beans. For Aaron, whose favorite fish is tilapia, this was a great meal. For me, whose favorite fish is salmon, it was tasty, but not something I'd run off and tell people about. (Then again, nothing with tilapia is that good to me.)


When I made the filling originally, I doubled it, because I needed twice as many pieces of fish. Turns out, because I had so much trouble filling the tilapia, I ended up with over half the stuffing leftover.

Wednesday night, upon realizing I had rapidly expiring chicken breast filets sitting right next to the leftover filling, I had an idea - why not try again??

So I repeated the recipe, with the same filling and more sauce, but this time with chicken instead of fish. The end result was delicious. The filling kept the chicken nice and moist, and the subtle chicken flavor complimented the onions and broccoli in the filling in a much more satisfying way than the tilapia did for me. Aaron, his uncle, and I cleaned our plates of the chicken (this time with salad and green beans). This time, I actually found myself wanting more, rather than leaving half for Aaron, like I did with the fish.

All in all, this recipe is a DEFINITE win, both for tilapia and for chicken lovers. Yay!!

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