Parmesean Crusted Tilapia with Parmesean Crusted Hasselback Potatoes Photo Shoot and Recipe

 

I love parmesean cheese and last night’s dinner was essentially a tribute to that.  I did an attempt at Hasselback swedish style potatoes with Mexican potatoes served with parmesean crusted white fish filets. Doing anything with Mexican potatoes is hit or miss at first to be honest so no doubt that recipe will take so tweaking in terms of time cooked but I will have it perfect in time. The fish was awesome, flaky and tasty with the crunchy topping.   

You start with an oiled pan, I used avocado oil in a glass pan.   

 I used medium sized white potatoes for this, starting by cutting off a sliver on the bottom so it has a flat surface.  Then, taking care to not cut all the way through you slice the potato ever quarter inch or so to allow fat to seep down in and the potato to fan out while cooking.

To compensate for the fact that Mexican potatoes are notoriously hard to cook in a timely manner, I decided to cook the potatoes for almost an hour before I topped them with the parmesean cheese cracker crumble mix. (crumble) (butter) The crust was just probably 20 saltine crackers smashed to crumbs, about a half cup of parmesean cheese, pepper and a quarter cup of butter softened to room temperature.    

I just smeared an even layer of butter on and put them in at about 375 for almost an hour. Put the crumble on top and bake for another fourty minutes or until the crumble is golden brown. In the meantime I got the rest of the dish ready, the fish.

I infused some butter with garlic just by melting the butter and lightly sauteeing chopped garlic.  I did this using about a half a cup of butter between four fillets.    

I used tilapia but any white fish works fine, I know this from experience. I just add a little butter to the pan, add the fish, the rest of the butter and the crumble.  If you time things right you should be putting this in for the last ten minutes of the potatoes baking.  I usually turn the oven temp up at the very end to brown the crust but once that crust is brown the fish should be cooked.  If you have one test the temperature and if it’s at least 160 it’s fine.

Sadly this time the potatoes looked better than they tasted. The crust was the best part in my opinion although I cannot say that the recipe itself is to blame.  No doubt this one would probably become a favorite done right so I’ll try again soon with a longer precooking time to make sure the texture of the potato is better.

The fish came out stellar, flaky and flavorful.   

Not every dish comes out perfect but that’s just life sometimes.  It’s learning to handle these things better that is the challenge, for me at least.    

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