Poached Orange Tilapia with Fried Zucchini
Everyone always cooks seafood with lemon, and I love oranges, so I figured I'd give it a try. It turned out... interesting. It wasn't bad, it was just very strange to have fish that was sweet. If I try this again, I'll probably throw in either some lemon or lime to make it a little more tart. I think there's potential here, maybe with a different type of fish. This whole meal was a product of me wandering around the grocery store buying what looked good and was on sale.
I actually had a ton of fun cooking this fried zucchini. I cut it all up in to 3/4 inch slices, threw it in a bowl, then tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, and some garlic powder for good measure. (I don't know, it was sitting on the counter.) I then fired up my cast iron grill pan, let them sear, gave them a quarter turn for the fancy checker board marks, then tossed them in another frying pan with almost carmelized onions and mushrooms to let them finish cooking.
I tried deglazing the pan with white wine to make some kind of white wine mushroom sauce, but it didn't taste how I expected it to, and it would have really clashed with the orange flavor of the tilapia. The sauce would have been less funky had I left out the garlic powder earlier I think.
Either way, this whole meal turned out pretty good for a seat-of-the-pants type thing.