Let’s start with the tilapia. I was never a big fan of fish, but over the past several years I’ve kept trying it, and gotten to like a lot of it. (I could eat salmon every day.)
At some point I tried tilapia, and hated it–it doesn’t have much flavor on its own, and worse, it tasted like dirt.
But I kept seeing recipes for it. And it wouldn’t be so popular if it always tasted like dirt, right? Maybe I’d just had a bad batch.
Wrong. Or at the least I got another bad batch. I googled for “why does tilapia taste like dirt” and the theory is bad farming conditions. If the water is dirty, the fish absorbs the flavor. Isn’t that a lovely thought?
Then there was the frozen lettuce. (And milk, yogurt, strawberries…but those are ok frozen, or thawed.) A couple people suggested lettuce soup. This might have been ok with younger lettuce, but it brought out the bitterness in mine. Adding vinegar helped with that. It might have been better as cream of lettuce soup. There was supposed to be a potato, but we didn’t have any. Just olive oil, onion, various herbs, some bell pepper, the frozen lettuce, and water. I’d be willing to give this another try the next time my lettuce freezes.
And finally, I tried to make peach mojitos, and straining out the peach solids proved to be impossible. They ended up a little chunky. At which point I gave up on being a decent cook for a while. Unfortunately my husband brought chicken breasts home from the store yesterday. I wonder what horrible thing I can do to them…
Chicken breasts: cut into strips lengthwise, rub with hot paprika (or paprika and cayenne pepper), fry in ghee or butter, add creme fraiche when done. Or stuff with something.
Mmmm. That sounds like the beginnings of chicken paprikas. Which would be good, but I’d rather save it for colder weather.
I’m probably going to do something pretty similar, but with herbs and wine instead. (Which I’ve done before quite competently, so I’m not really that worried.)