Don't bother cooking tilapia, too many bones, not enough meat

[carol]

We happened to catch a Bobby Flay grilling show on the Food Network where he made tilapia fillets with a garlic/butter/lemon/ginger sauce. It looked good, and when we spotted whole tilapia at Mega for only around $2.50 US a kilo, $1.20 or so a pound, we bought two small ones.

What a waste of cooking time and sauce ingredients. There was so little meat on the plentiful bones that we could barely find it. And I overcooked the green beans, and we'd used up all salad makings last night.

We headed to Vivoli Cafe near us for big salads to make us feel that we'd had a meal. That saved the day.

If we ever see tilapia fillets in town, from big enough fish to make it possible to get decent fillets, we'll try again.

Anyone got a good recipe for tilapia and know where there might be boneless fillets?

Carol Schmidt

[Don C]

We get our boneless tilapia at either nearby Costco, it is not in freezer section.

[Anonimo]

Besides, it's nearly tasteless and has too soft a texture.

I call it "Tofu Of The Sea".

saludos,
Anonimo

[carol]

We will look for the fillets at Costco. Hope they're not pre-frozen, but if they are we'll justplan on having them the next night.

Yes, we noticed the meat was soft. Good description, tofu of the sea. I don't think it would hold up to being tossed in hot and sour soup or in a stir fry, however. But the fillets on Bobby Flay's show held up to grilling (touch and go on the flipping--better to use a fish grilling rack if you have one, and we don't).

We're still getting to know the Spanish words for fish. http://www.rollybrook.com/lexicon-groups.htm#fish has an excellent dictionary of fish terms, English and Spanish. At the market we write down fish that look good and go check his dictionary to see what they are before we buy.

Just learned corbina is sea bass! Now that's a delicacy. Lobina or róbalo is bass in general. We have four whole lake salmon in the freezer to be grilled for a party some day--no problem there, salmon is salmón, like tilapia was tilapia. Halibut is halibut, but also hipogloso.

Trout is trucha--we guessed that one before we checked. We had to look up Costco's blanco de Nilo, a farm-raised white fish. Mero is grouper. Sometimes Mega has flounder, platia. And then of course everybody's favorite is red snapper, huachinango, which is also called pargo rojo, I think for the Sea of Cortez variety.

Our second favorite fish to cook is Mega's frozen catfish fillets, suprema. Norma marinates the fillets in cajun seasonings, a la Emeril LaGasse, then lightly batters them, fries them quickly in very hot oil, and uses them in fish tacos with a cajun coleslaw and/or a mango-pineapple salsa.

Anyone else have a favorite fish recipe?

Carol Schmidt