North African Spiced Marinated Fish (pg. 362)

I don't know about you, but I have a lot of friends that are vegetarians. This is frustrating, not because I enjoy touching raw dead things to cook (I don't) but because I never really know what to prepare for guests that doesn't include meat. Luckily, I've found a loop hole, and it's called fish.

"Fish is a meat!," you might be thinking, but you are wrong. For the purposes of many vegetarian-minded, fish is, in fact a vegetable. So, when my lovely friends Sarah and Meg were coming for dinner to celebrate Sarah's birthday last week, it was the perfect chance for me to debut a recipe from my new favorite cookbook -- North African Spiced Marinated Fish. Underneath that name, in my cookbook, it says Chermoula, just like that, in italics. I have no idea what that means, but enjoyed repeating it to myself as a mantra whilst I cooked.

I had leafed through most of the fish section and decided on this recipe because I already had most of the necessary ingredients. I love recipes that don't make me purchase $40 worth of spices and food stuffs that I'll probably never use again, so this was right up my alley. Other than parsley (which I hate, by the way) and cilantro (which I love) and the actual fish, I was good to go. The other bonus for this recipe is that the cookbook promised it would be delicious with whatever fish I chose. So I got tilapia, because it's cheap.

Basically to make this, you chop up a bunch of fresh herbs, mix with spices, garlic, olive oil and lemon juice, and marinate your fish in it for an hour or so. Then you pop it in a hot oven for twenty minutes, and you're good to go. It was ridiculously easy to make.

I wasn't quite ready to tackle a second recipe from The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook, and had been wanting to try out a potato recipe that I'd seen on a friend's blog a few days before, so I also made Crash Hot Potatoes. Thanks to my (other) friend Sarah for leading me to these, because they're awesome, and easy, and a total crowd-pleaser.

Both of these recipes could be prepared in advance, and they both called for the same temperature and time in the oven, so I was just able to pop them both in once my buds arrived. Twenty minutes later, paired with some white wine and warm bread, we were ready to go. Dinner was delicious, if I may be so bold. The fish was flaky and wonderful, and I couldn't even taste the parsley. If I made this recipe again (which I'll probably never have time to do now that I have a goal) I wouldn't change a thing. Try it, it's totally delicious.