LIGHT DINNER

We had some leftover meatballs and sauce last night with perciatelli pasta as I just couldn't reheat the store brand pasta.  I adore perciatelli and bucatini as they are round like spaghetti but are hollow in the middle and all of the good, warm sauce gets into the pasta tubes! But I digress, we are going for a light meal.

I made tilapia in foil pouches with veggies, a yogurt mustard sauce and ginger-nutmeg glazed carrots with pecans.

I asked the hubs last night what he wanted for dinner tonight, as he has a cold - I shall not name the co-worker responsible for this but payback is not pretty!  Thinking that a light fish dish would be good I actually gave him 3 fish choices, cod, flounder or tilapia.  He chose the tilapia.

I have made tilapia so many times that I jumped in with both feet and knew that it would be a foil packet with aromatics and veggies, but I wanted a lightly sweet contrast to the lemon, garlic and shallots that I would use with the fish.  I had recently gotten a great deal on carrots, 5lbs for 2.99 and the 2lb bag was 2.79  yea I went crazy and got the 5 lb bag.  How am I going to use up 5 lbs of carrots???  Oh childhood memory of glazed carrots but how can I make them pumped up and better...SPICES!!  Hello ginger and nutmeg!

Ok first I started with all or most of all my ingredients, I was still torn between nutmeg and cinnamon as the second spice. 

 I started by peeling the carrots and slicing them into 1/4" discs. 

Next was the mustard sauce for the tilapia.

• 2 T Greek yogurt
• 1 T honey
• squeeze of lemon (don't go too crazy, I have and not good)
• 1 T chopped chives
• Salt and pepper to taste

I then chopped up the veggies I needed to for the foil packets, got the whole veggies ready and was ready to get the oven heated to 425 degrees.

 I've got the carrots in medallions, chopped garlic, chopped shallot, grated ginger, chopped tomatoes, whole sugar snap peas, lemon zest, chopped thyme and two sprigs of whole thyme.

Assembly, foil, tilapia, oil, salt and pepper...

Add the tomato, lemon zest (be frugal with this and the lemon juice), chopped thyme, chopped garlic, chopped shallot, sugar snap peas and squeeze a bit of lemon juice over the filets and seal.  If you want less lemon and acidity add some chicken stock instead of the lemon juice.  

And ready for the oven..

Now for the carrots...

1/4 C of chicken or veggie stock

1/4 to 1/2 C water

Add 2 T of brown sugar

2 T of honey

1/4 t of fresh grated ginger

Add the carrots

cook for 4-5 minutes covered, and then take the cover off and reduce the liquid, as it starts to reduce add the pecans.  The carrots, pecans and spices will caramelize

The sweet caramelized carrots with the lemon based tilapia are great together...sweet, lightly sour, light veggies and no rich sauce..dinner is awesome!