Good Friday Dinner

It was the perfect Easter weekend! The weather here was awesome and husband and I spent Easter day with my family. We dined on a lot of wonderful food (a real Southern meal), had an Easter egg hunt, and relaxed outside. The Easter Bunny brought me a new pilates mat and the movie “Despicable Me”. I was very excited!

On Friday, we had our friends Jesse and Krew over for “Good Friday dinner”. I tried out some new recipes (which all good etiquette says never to try out new recipes for guests- but they’re close friends and don’t really care). We had fish cakes and roasted shrimp on salad greens with fingerling potatoes. I liked this meal because there were a lot of things that I could do ahead of time. My favorite part of it all was the fish cakes; the recipe was from this month’s Real Simple. They featured a “10 things to do with Tilapia” section which I really liked, because tilapia can get boring. Here’s how to make the cakes:

You’ll need: 4 6-ounce tilapia filets, ½ cup mayo, 2 eggs, 2 tbs chopped dill, 1 tbs Dijon mustard, ¾ cup bread crumbs (panko probably will work best). Preheat the oven to 400. Salt and pepper the tilapia and bake them in the oven for about 12 minutes, until cooked through. Meanwhile, combine the mayo, eggs, dill, and mustard in a medium bowl. When the fish is finished, fold it in. Next form the batter into medium-sized cakes; you’ll get 8-9. Coat the cakes in the bread crumbs. Heat about 2 tbs of evoo in a non-stick skillet. Cook the cakes on medium heat 3-5 minutes on each side.

The shrimp are really easy to do. Peel and devein 15-20 shrimp. Preheat the oven to 400. Coat the shrimp in evoo, salt, and pepper and place them in an even layer on a baking sheet. Roast them in the oven for 6-8 minutes until pink and firm.

I made a lemon vinaigrette for the salad greens, and served the fish cakes and shrimp on that. The fingerling potatoes were on the side. I’m linking the recipe for the potatoes. They were “ok”, I don’t think that fingerling potatoes are my favorite, so I didn’t like them as much.

I also made a little lemon loaf cake for dessert. It was ok considering my “baking impairment”.

Time for one of my favorite kitchen gadgets: a good chef knife. Every cook needs a good, sharp chef knife. This knife can do just about anything you want so it is what I would start my knife collection with. When we got married we got a block of knives, but they aren’t the greatest in the world. For Christmas, husband gave me a Wusthof chef knife. I love it!