We are a mixed food preferences family. Let me explain. While we have kids who are generally open to all foods – even vegetables – one of our kids is pescetarian. This was a very foreign concept for our family. We had never really experience anyone who had lived a particular food preference lifestyle so this was a hard transitions for me since I was in charge of all of the meal preparation.
Pescetarianism, or pesco-vegetarianism, means being vegetarian while still including seafood in your diet. One still cuts out red meat, pork, poultry, etc. from his or her diet like a vegetarian, but does not cut out fish and other seafood1.
Clean plate club
Yes, that means every night I basically make two dinners. In a Filipino household making multiple dishes is unheard of. Well in my nuclear family we really weren’t able to choose what times of dinners we had. Our dinners were generally focused on Filipino cuisine and nothing else. Which is absolutely not a negative statement because Filipino cuisine always makes me feel like I’m home no matter where I am.
When I was growing up, we had to finish our dinner even if it wasn’t something we absolutely enjoyed. So We had to clean our plates or else. My parents worked opposite shifts and my dad was with us most of the time for dinner. So he made sure we finished our dinner. If you know anything about Ilocano dads, you know he wasn’t messing around. So I cleared my plate almost every night.
Quick meals
One of the benefits of making seafood dishes is how quick the meals come together. I will be sharing our top two recipes we have in rotation. They can be on the table in about 30 minutes!
Chili Lime Tilapia
- 4 4oz tilapia fillets
- 2 limes or lemons, zested and juiced
- 1 small clam shell cherry tomatoes
- olive oil
- salt and pepper, to taste
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
On a large sheet pan covered in foil, place the spinach all over. Drizzle with oil, season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle tomatoes over season spinach. Cover the entire pan tightly with foil.
Place fillets on top of spinach and tomatoes. Season the fillets with olive oil, chili powder, citrus zest, citrus juice, salt, and pepper.
Bake for 30 minutes or until fillets are fully cooked through. Serve with rice.
Miso-Glazed Salmon
A sweet-salty miso, brown sugar, and soy sauce glaze caramelizes in about 10 minutes as it cooks atop rich, meaty salmon.
This recipe is adapted from a Cooking Light recipe.
- 1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
- 2 tbsp low sodium soy sauce
- 2 tbsp hot water
- 1 tsp salt and pepper or to taste
- 2 tbsp miso (soybean paste)
- 4 6 oz salmon fillets
- cooking spray
Preheat broiler.
Combine first 5 ingredients, stirring with a whisk. Arrange fish in a shallow baking dish coated with cooking spray. Spoon miso mixture evenly over fish.
Broil 10 minutes or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork, basting twice with miso mixture.