How to Boil Water: Tilapia Salad with Strawberry-Pineapple Salsa

Yours and mine favorite series is back! Things got a little crazy and for awhile the only thing that I was cooking were things that we had made before, but mostly we were eating out. But we are trying to save money like little hermits so we are back to eating in. Plus, it's healthier and we need to figure out some good meals that we can cook before we have kids to give them a good diet as well. There are all sorts of reason to cook at home, so we are back at it again this week and for many many more to come.

So for today, we had ourselves some Tilapia Salad with Strawberry-Pineapple Salsa.

Ingredients:
1 can (8oz) crushed pineapple in juice, drained, juice reserved
2 cups fresh strawberries, stems removed, halved
1/2 cup diced cucumber
1/4 cup chopped fresh mint leaves
2 tablespoons tarragon or wine vinegar
2 medium green onions, thinly sliced (2 tablespoons)
4 tilapia or mild-flavored fish fillets
Cooking Spray
1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika, if desired
4 cups loosely packed fresh spinach

Directions:
Open can of pineapples and set aside 2 tbsp of pineapple juice. Put remaining pineapple juice and pineapple into a larger bowl.

Combine the next five ingredients: strawberries, cucumber, mint leaves, tarragon or wine vinegar, and green onions with the pineapple and stir to make the salsa. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to broil. Place the tilapia on the broiler pan and spray the tops with cooking spray. Use the pineapple juice set aside and sprinkle it on the top of each then sprinkle with seasoned salt and smoked paprika. When the oven is ready, put the tilapia in the oven 4-6 inches from the heat for 6-8 minutes or until fish flakes easily with fork.

Wash spinach and arrange about 1 cup on each place. Place fish on top of the spinach and top with the pineapple-strawberry salsa.

A couple notes about this meal before I completely wrap this up:

*We had to makeshift a broiler pan. We didn't have one and as I said earlier, we are saving money and since this is the first time we have used the broiler, so we were not about to run out to get one. So we combined a pan with a cooling rack and called it good. It looks a little mismatched, mostly because we have a huge cooling rack which is awesome when I make cookies but weird when I broil something.

*The fish doesn't take long to cook and it's pretty easy but our experience with the broiler for the first time was an interesting one. As the fish was cooking we noticed a horrible smell and it was getting really smoky, but we didn't completely know why. I had never used the broiler so maybe it was that, maybe it was just our oven - we had no idea. Luckily the windows were open so it didn't set off the smoke alarm. When we took it out, we definitely noticed something was wrong.

The picture above was the first attempt. It might look okay in the picture but it definitely not cooked right. What we discovered was when I turned on the broiler I didn't turn it quite far enough so it was still cooking from the regular oven (the bottom) just really really really hot. So we had to go out and get more fish to try again. It worked much better the second time around. Also, I'm going to say Target has some package where you buy serving size and not buy a huge package that you don't have room for in the freezer. Plus, I hate buying such things in big packages because we don't even know if we like it and will eat it again, so why risk it? But this worked perfectly.

And our feelings about this? Rob loved it. And I was mostly indifferent to it. I was hoping maybe I got over my dislike of fish but apparently I haven't. It's the texture I don't like I think. There's just something about it. But if I ate a strawberry at the same time I at the fish I couldn't taste the fish so it worked out. This recipe has made it into the book of favorites that I am keeping and writing down. And there you have it.