My Top 3 Favorite Recipes from Last Week

As a sort of review, and an easy digest, I have decided to share my favorite recipes that I try each week. This blog shares two recipes I have not yet shared: broiled tilapia parmesan and Indian eggplant. And points to one that I have already shared.

It's been a good week for food. So without further ado, here are three recipes I would recommend trying out:

1. Broiled Tilapia Parmesan


It is a balance for me to find recipes for fish that are both healthy and delicious. Often, recipes will call for some kind of butter sauce. Unfortunately - or fortunately depending on how you want to look at it - this is one of those recipes. Probably not the healthiest way to cook tilapia, an otherwise boring fish, but at least we ate fish, right?

I only made a few alterations to this recipe, which I found on my favorite website, Allrecipes. Here's the link for Broiled Tilapia Parmesan.

The recipe calls for broiling the fish, 2 minutes on each side, flipping twice and then applying the following butter- and mayonnaise-based sauce. I left out the mayo. I don't usually buy it, and I don't think it's necessary in this recipe.

The sauce calls for:

• 1/2 cup parmesan cheese - I used the pre-grated kind. Not at all fresh, but it did the trick.
• 1/4 cup butter, softened - follow this instruction. Don't melt it all the way.
• 3 TBSP mayo - I left this out, and used sour cream instead. It worked nicely.
• 2 TBSP lemon juice
• 1/4 TSP dried basil
• 1/4 TSP pepper
• 1/8 TSP onion powder - I really need to buy some of this. In the meantime, I used the minced onion I have and rarely use.
• 1/8 TSP celery salt - I didn't have any, so I didn't add this.

The result is thick, but after you spread it on the already cooking fish, it melts nicely and adds a lot of flavor.

I had leftover, so I used it on salmon later in the week, and it also worked well there. I mixed in dried parsley for that recipe.

2. The two Mexican recipes I tried out: Mexican lasagna and Green Chili Enchiladas.

You can find those recipes and the changes I made to them here.

3. Indian Eggplant with Rice

Yum! This looked boring, but ended up having great flavor. I always enjoy this dish at Indian restaurants, so I was eager to see if I could replicate it in my kitchen in a way that my husband would actually enjoy it. I'll try to remember all the changes I made to this recipe I found on, where else, Allrecipes. Here's that recipe: Indian Eggplant - Bhurtha

Eggplant was a staple for part of the year while I served in the Peace Corps in Armenia, and I ate it frequently. It was also part of the Armenian horavats, or barbecue, tradition, served with peppers and other veggies cooked in the fire.

It's appearing in our produce sections of the grocery store right now, so I picked one up, which means I had to find a way to use it.

This recipe calls for roasting the eggplant whole in the oven. I decided to slice it in 1-inch pieces, brush the pieces with oil and roast it that way. When the eggplant was sufficiently soft, I took it out, chopped it further into smaller pieces and added it to the tomato-based sauce. Rather than use an actual large tomato as the recipe calls for, I used two 15 oz. cans of diced tomatoes from Muir Glen. Great flavor.

The other changes I made to the recipe, either because I didn't have the spices or because I don't like them, included using ground cumin rather than cumin seeds, using dried powdered ginger rather than fresh, using olive oil instead of vegetable oil, leaving out the turmeric (just didn't have any but from what I found online, it's not necessary anyway), using garlic powder instead of garlic cloves, and leaving out the cilantro.

The big addition I made to this recipe was adding curry powder. I believe I added about a teaspoon to the sauce.

I also added about 3/4 cup frozen peas, which I believe is absolutely necessary for this dish! I served with white rice.

BONUS: I had some tomato-eggplant sauce leftover, so the next day, I fried some fingerling potatoes (sliced) and then mixed in with the sauce. Delicious! I wholly recommend cooking fingerling potatoes this way. They are great roasted in the oven whole, as well, but these cook a lot faster and are more interesting than your standard Russet potato fried in the same way.