Lemon-pepper tilapia

You'll never use the powdered stuff again!

Photo courtesy of Jenny's camera phone

This post is dedicated to my dear cousin and wonderful roommate, Jenny Luu.  We haven't spent any time with each other for a while, so today we shopped for 5 hours!  It's amazing how much damage we can do at the mall :). We (sort of) behaved ourselves today though. I got a pair of boots for the fall, a shirt (for $7!), and an obi belt that I have been eyeing for months :) After such a shopping trip, we didn't want to spend any more money on eating out, so we decided that we would cook a cheap and healthy meal for dinner.  We were also having some girls over, and really, we didn't want to pay for restaurant food either!  Plus, since Jenny is moving out in a month, I have to teach her some recipes so she doesn't starve when I'm not around (Love you Jenny!)

Since we wanted something healthy and cheap, we chose tilapia.  Salt and pepper was easy but boring, and we are not boring girls!  Actually, we had lemon-pepper tilapia once before - Jenny made me lemon pepper fish once with some powdered lemon pepper ... and it was the most horrible thing I had ever tasted!  It tasted like chemicals - like a combination of the stuff they put on sour patch kids to make them sour plus cheap black pepper - ick.  So I came up with this recipe for her because it is super easy and it only takes 20 minutes to make.  The lemon zest gives the fish lots of great lemon flavor without being tart.  Jenny, I hope you took notes!


Lemon pepper tilapia
Serves 4
Print this recipe


Ingredients
4 tilapia fillets
1 lemon, zested and thinly sliced
1 teaspoon fresh thyme, finely chopped
1 large or 2 small cloves of garlic, minced
2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper


Directions
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. 
2. Combine lemon zest, thyme, and garlic in a small bowl.
3. Season both sides of tilapia with salt and pepper.
4. Lay lemon slices in a single layer on a piece of parchment paper (on a baking sheet), then lay the tilapia fillets on top of the lemon slices. 
5. Top each fillet with the zest-garlic-thyme mixture and rub it in. 
6. Drizzle with olive oil.
7. Bake for 15 minutes or until fish is opaque and flakey. 
8. Enjoy without guilt! 


Crap, it's past 11:00 and I told myself that I would be in bed by 10:00 for work tomorrow.  Please excuse any spelling errors, I wrote this super fast as I was chatting with the ladies!


xoxo <3
Nhu-Y