Mediterranean White Fish Recipe

I’ll admit, I don’t particularly like cooking fish.  One reason is that I’m not a huge fan of buying frozen seafood that’s been sitting in a store freezer for who knows how long.  So convenience is a factor here.  I’d much prefer to buy seafood fresh on the day that I actually cook it, and since that doesn’t happen often, cooking fish tends to make it to the bottom of my list.

The second reason why fish isn’t always on my menu is simply because I don’t know have any good recipes.  Squeezing lemon juice on top of salmon with a little bit of salt and pepper, although yummy, is not very exciting.

So when my a good friend and fellow Lean Body Challenge participant Aliza sent me a flounder recipe she tried I felt that there was some hope to make fish more sexy.

But flounder?  Yes, flounder.  And no, we are not talking about Ariel’s underwater sidekick, which despite his name, is not actually flounder at all, but rather an Atlantic Blue Tang tropical fish.

Impostor.

I was intrigued with the recipe since I’ve been attempting to eat more white fish in my diet.  White fish are lower in polyunsaturated fats and higher in minerals compared to other fish.  I started incorporating this advanced nutritional strategy based off what I’ve learned from Josh Rubin’s Metabolic Blueprint education program, an 8-week tele-course that’s the equivalent of a Master’s level anatomy and biology course.

So far I’ve been successful with adding in tilapia and sole, but have yet to try flounder.  Although flounder isn’t the best choice according to Rubin, there’s no reason why you can’t substitute the flounder for another white fish like sole, cod or scrod.

I wanted to try out the recipe since my tilapia is getting a bit boring, so I asked her to take a picture and shoot me the directions.  And while I was at it, I figured I might as well blog about it too.

Check out Aliza’s Mediterranean White Fish Recipe below which was an adaptation from a recipe she found on Epicurious.com.  The only thing we changed was substituting vegetable oil with olive and coconut oil….and I changed the name to make it a bit more sexy. “Fish Fillets with Tomatoes and Olives in Parchment” just wasn’t doing it for me.  You can see the original recipe here.

Thank you again for taking the picture and sending the recipe, Aliza!

Mediterranean White Fish Recipe

Ingredients:

• Four 20×15 inch pieces of parchment paper
• Olive oil for brushing the parchment
• Four 6- to-8 ounce skinless whitefish like sole, cod or scrod.
• Twelve 1/4-inch-thick tomato slices
• 8 Kalamata olives
• 1/2 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes
• 1 1/2 tablespoons coconut oil (not melted)
• Zest from 1/2 orange removed with a vegetable peeler and cut into thin julienne strips
• 4 fresh herb sprigs, such as sage, thyme, or parsley

Directions:

1. Brush 1 of the pieces of parchment with olive oil, turn it over, and brush the other side with the oil.  Arrange a second piece of parchment on top of the first, brush it with the oil, and layer the remaining 2 pieces on top in the same manner.
2. Season the fish with salt and pepper, arrange 1 of the fillets on one half of the top piece of parchment, and top it with 3 tomato slices, one fourth of the olives, 1/8 teaspoon of the red pepper flakes, one fourth of the coconut oil, one fourth of the zest, and 1 herb sprig.
3. Fold the other half of the parchment over the fillet, beginning with a folded corner twist and fold the edges together forming a half-heart-shaped packet, and seal the end tightly by twisting it.
4. Make 3 more packets with the remaining parchment and ingredients in the same manner. (Alternatively, the fish mixture can be wrapped in sheets of foil, oiling only the inside.)
5. Bake the packets on a baking sheet in the middle of a preheated 450°F. oven for 10 minutes and cut them open before serving.