Moti Girl Recipe: Tilapia a la Foil

Bonjour!  Or shall I begin with Ni Hao this morning? I begin today's blog post with a yummy-in-your-tummy,  healthy Asian inspired Tilapia recipe with a fancy French name. As my quest to shed my Moti Girl pounds continue, I came across an interesting recipe that I reconfigured a little bit to incorporate all my favorite ingredients.  It's quite simple, low maintenance and a delish recipe, that I had to share with you all!

I'm not much of a measurer, but I will do my best for you guys.

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons of chopped chives
• 7 garlic cloves grated in a microplane (I tend to throw in a few more cloves for added flavor)
• 1 teaspoon of grated ginger
• 1 tablespoon of red crushed pepper
• 2 tablespoons of Sesame Oil
• 1/4 cup of low sodium Soy Sauce
• 1 teaspoon of Chinese 5 spice seasoning
• 5-6 pieces of fresh Tilapia (you can probably do this with any kid of mild white fish)
• Splashes of Ponzu sauce
• Foil

Begin by preheating your oven to 350 degrees.  In a bowl, combine the first 7 ingredients and whisk it till the marinade/sauce is nicely blended together (chives, garlic, ginger, red crushed peppers, sesame oil, soy sauce and 5 spice). Whisk it good...

Take the Tilapia out of the fridge and rinse it under the sink and make sure to pat dry it with paper towels.  This is more so your marinade/sauce doesn't get the excess water in it.

rinse the fish

pat dry

Now tear out a large piece of foil out and place a piece of Tilapia in the middle of the sheet.   Depending on the sizes of fish, you can either put one big piece or a couple small pieces of fish together on the foil.  Spoon 2 generous tablespoons of the marinade over the fish and then splash (a teaspoon of the Ponzu sauce over the fish as well).  Ponzu is a citrus-based Japanese sauce and is available at any grocery store. I personally like to peruse the Asian markets for stuff like this, because it is a lot cheaper there (yeah I'm cheapo) and you get way more variety.  I like using it because it gives the dish a little bit of citrus flavor without overwhelming it with fresh citrus. I am partial to the lime flavored Ponzu Sauce.

adding marinade

Lime flavored Ponzu sauce

Neatly enclose the fish into a foil packet and place all the packets on a baking sheet.

Foil packets of Fish

Bake the fish for 20 minutes in the oven.  You'll know that the fish is close to being done when the foil packets puff up with steam and sauce emerges from the corners of the foil packets.  Variation:  Sometimes I like to add shredded carrots and broccoli on top of the fish.  Trader Joes has this awesome ready-to-go shredded vegetable mix for cole slaw that works perfectly with this dish.  I like to sneak in as many veggies as I can for the fams.

Puffed up foil packets

Now take the baking sheet out and open the foil pack with care, a lot of steam will escape as you open the packet. You don't want to give yourself a facial while cooking.

open with care

yummy tilapia

I like to make this with some brown jasmine rice and steamed bok choy.  This particular day I made it  brown jasmine rice with corn and shitake mushrooms and steamed baby bok choy with garlic.  I will share the bok choy recipe later this week.

Voila

I hope you guys will attempt this recipe and enjoy it as much as I do. It is truly very simple and tasty, not to mention healthy.  I think cooking in foil or parchment is easy and makes for a very flavorful meal   Feel free to leave comments on what you thought or on variations that you might have attempted.  

Thanks again folks, this is your Moti Girl bidding you adieu!  :)