mediterranean style tilapia

I am always on the lookout for super simple easy week night recipes. Meals that can be baked up, wrapped up, sauteed up or even whipped up in no time at all. Having been on a vegetable binge lately I wanted to freshen up the week day dinner ritual with something fresh, perhaps something that swam at one time. I went to Whole Foods and roamed the aisles until something spoke to me; it’s definitely not because I consider Whole Foods my new home, no not at all. I’ve already picked out a spot for the over sized couch by the cheese shop and a king sized bed in the wine section – I mean I have not done those things – but the roaming until food spoke to me trip I did do, and that was in another part of town. Seafood town. I gasped as I wandered over into the culdesac of seafood to see a half circle of bins filled with crushed ice and huge whole fish shoved gently in between the layers. Their heads were poking out of the ice, their mouths were open and their eyes followed me from right to left as I quickly walked by.

Though the fish heads almost made me turn around I decided to keep walking. I gazed through the frosty glass at the seafood counter as I slowly walked by. Checking out the fresh catches of the day I saw the typical salmon, trout, halibut, and cod. I was going to pass up the seafood until the seafood man appeared out of nowhere and asked me if I needed help. Not wanting to look rude in front of my newly found super cool diggs I decided to play it cool and ask for two red snapper fillets. The stealthy magician of a seafood man unfortunately had no red snapper, but he did have a similar fish, the likes of which did not look pleasant. It brought back the aforementioned memory of fish heads — though the fillet was quite nicely chiseled out of the fish’s body — the look and texture through the frosty glass looked a bit sketchy.

Again, not wanting to appear rude and wanting to impress my new seafood man I  quickly fell back on tilapia. He weighed them, wrapped them and off I was wandering through my totally awesome home/grocery store to figure out how to prepare my fillets. Walking through my new favorite worthy of worship produce section I grabbed some tomatoes and a red onion and quickly decided upon a Mediterranean theme for my fish. Picking up a few more ingredients I set out on a journey to my second favorite, actual home and planned out my attack on the seafood man’s tilapia.

As I was putting away some of my groceries in the pantry I looked down and saw a roll of parchment paper. I immediately got the best light bulb going off moment in my life, well the best one in a while. My ingenious plan was to bake the fish and all its Mediterranean goodies in a parchment pouch. The vegetables would flavor the fish and would become soft and tender. The fish would be baked in the juices of the vegetables and would soak up all the flavors and, best of all, there would be little to no clean up needed — my absolute favorite part of the whole plan. I quickly sliced my onion, chopped some tomatoes, threw in some olives and capers, sprinkled with herbs and decided to add a punch of lemon juice and a drizzle of oil, all wrapped neatly in a little parchment package. They baked in no time at all and, when opened, they let out the smallest little puff of savory perfumed air that made you want to dive fork full after fork full into the fish.

Mediterranean Style Tilapia

My only recommendation is to use regular black olives rather than kalamata olives. The fish needed more salt, but if I added more then the bites of fish paired with an olive would have sent you reeling from your chair from saltiness. My preference would be to flavor the fish with more salt and have less salty add ins.

Serves 4

1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced
10 grape or cherry tomatoes, halved
16 pitted kalamata olives*
4 small tilapia fillets
1/2 teaspoon olive oil
1 small lemon, halved
4 teaspoons capers
2 gloves of garlic, minced
2 – 3 teaspoons dried oregano
Salt and pepper

Preheat over to 350°F. Place two 18-inch pieces of parchment paper on a baking sheet.

Place two fillets in the center of each sheet of parchment paper.

Squeeze the juice of half a lemon onto each. Drizzle olive oil over each and season both sides of the fillet with salt and pepper.

Divide the remaining ingredients in half and use each half over the two fillets on each parchment sheet.

Fold the ends of the parchment together (I tucked the loose ends underneath the fillets to keep the pouch closed) and bake for 15 – 20 minutes.

Remove from the oven, place each package on a serving plate and let the fish cool for 3 – 5 minutes. Serve immediately.