Baked Tomato Tilapia

As a single person cooking for one, the butcher and seafood section at your grocery store are your friends.  Fresh and in just the right portion, buy a single fillet or a single steak.  Here's a light dinner favorite.

Ingredients:
1 - 2 tilapia fillets
nonstick vegetable oil spray
1 cup heirloom cherry tomatoes, chopped (or other tomatoes)
1 tablespoon olive oil
3/4 teaspoon thyme
1/8 teaspoo red pepper flakes
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup red onion, diced
1/2 tablespoon lime juice
salt & fresh ground pepper to taste

Supplies:
Toaster Oven
Baking Dish
Cutting Board + Knife

Directions:

Preheat the toaster oven to 400 degrees.

Spray baking dish with vegetable oil spray.

Arrange fillets flat in baking dish.

Mix remaining ingredients and spoon evenly over fillets.

Bake uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes until fish flakes easily.

Serve With:  Rice; Cooked Green Veggies; Salad; and/or White Wine

Portobello Mushroom Sandwich

Portobello Mushrooms are another great item that you can buy in single portions. This is one of my favorite dishes - meaty, filling and vegetarian. Enjoy!

Portobello Mushroom Sandwich

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Ingredients:
1 Portobello Mushroom
1 Bell Pepper - Red or Orange are my favorite, but pick any color
Red Onion (optional)
Lettuce (optional)
Pesto (alternative: olive oil and vinegar OR garlic aioli)
Mini Baguette, Panini, or 2 slices of regular ol' bread

Supplies:
Cutting Board + Knife
Toaster Oven
Hot Plate + Pan + Spatula (optional for sautéing onions)

Directions:

Preheat Toaster Oven using Broiler setting. Once preheated, place bell pepper in oven close to broiler. Let pepper skin blacken. Now walk away and straighten up your apartment or put on the DVR or dance to some good tunes. In a toaster oven, roasting regrettably takes longer than a conventional oven - mine took about 20 minutes. Occassionally check in to rotate pepper until all sides are blackened.

Once the entire pepper is blackened, remove pepper from toaster oven. Place in plastic bag and tie closed. Place bag in fridge to cool.

In the meantime, place mushroom in oven (cap side down, gills up) to broil. While mushroom is cooking, chop onion. Turn on hot plate and heat small amount of olive oil in pan. Add onions and saute. When onions are soft, remove from pan.

Check on your mushroom. Poke with fork to see if done. Remove mushroom when soft. Set aside to cool.

Get pepper from fridge and remove from plastic bag. Peel skin off of pepper using knife or fingers. Cut the pepper open and remove seeds and stem. Cut into 1" strips.

Spread pesto or other dressing on bread. Layer grilled onions, lettuce, roasted bell pepper and mushroom.

Viola! Portobello Mushroom Sandwich.


Great Alone, But for a Larger Meal Consider Serving With: Garlic Mashed Potatoes; Salad; Chips; Potato Salad; Glass of Wine

Kitchenada: The Bachelorette Challenge

Kitchenada: (noun) the art of living without a kitchen; also, a fan of the kitchen or a kitchen aficionado.

Call me a Kitchenada or a Kitchenista. I ♥ cooking, baking, experimenting, tasting, entertaining and generally just eating food. Whatever possessed me to sign a lease on a place without a full kitchen is beyond me. But, oh, it has crown molding and a walk-in closet and the neighborhood is so cute ... a girl can be easily distracted, you know? So forgive the sinner - I mean, the lease signer - because by hook or by crook, this girl will cook!

So laid out plainly - here's my challenge:

• Cooking for 1 not 100: Smaller portions, personal size.
• Freezer-less: It's chilling but true. No cooking large batches and saving the rest for later.
• Crisp-tastrophe: The mini-fridge keeps a temperature more inconsistent than the last guy I dated, which is no good for fruits and veg and bachelorette's hearts.
• Toastmaster: Toast On, Toast Off. You can bake, you can broil, and mmmm ... you can toast. Pushing the limits of toaster oven gourmet.
• Oh Bummer, One Burner. Adventures in Hot Plating It.
• Counterspace Challenged: Approximately 800 square inches of glorious marble countertops -- half of which are taken up by my toaster oven and the other half which I keep managing to break glass items on.
• Not a Bare Cupboard, but Barely a Cupboard: Limited Cupboard Space = Limited Appliances + Limited Supplies.
• More for Less: Healthy, Fresh & On Budget because food may be important, but so are waist sizes and new shoes ...

So without further ado, welcome to my Adventures in Hot-Plate Toaster-Oven Cooking for One. if you've got tips or challenges or recipes or stories to share by all means leave them in the comments. Unless your a spammer - you're officially uninvited - I hate Spam of both the electronic and canned varieties.

Eggplant Parmesan

For all the talk about the birds and the bees, I still believe Mother Nature was a free spirit and a solo bird. Take eggs or peaches or avocados, for example - all perfect single portion foods. An eggplant is no exception. Here's a favorite dinner for one.

Eggplant Parmesan

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Ingredients:
1 Eggplant (preferably American or Italian)
Salt
1 Egg
Splash of Milk
1 part Breadcrumbs
1 part Flour
Olive Oil
Parmesan
Tomato Sauce (fresh tomatoes, basil, garlic, salt, pepper, oregano)

Supplies:
Cutting Board + Knife
Hot Plate + Pan + Spatula
Toaster Oven + pan or pie plate or other baking dish that fits
Hand Blender (optional - for tomato sauce)

Directions:

Cut the eggplant into slices and sprinkle with salt. Cover eggplant pieces with a cutting board or plate and put a weight on top (such as a can) and let eggplant sit for about 30 minutes to drain excess water.

In the meantime, prepare tomato sauce by pureeing 2-3 Roma tomatoes (or any other type of tomato will do), 1 clove of garlic and 2 large basil leaves using your Hand Blender. Add salt, pepper and dried oregano to taste. (Skip this step if you are using a pre-made pasta sauce, which is a great quick and easy alternative - or embellish this sauce using your own ingredients such as parmesan, mushrooms, thyme, shallots, etc.).

Pour half the tomato mixture to coat the bottom of the baking pan.

After approximately 30 minutes, remove weight and plate or board from eggplant and pat dry.  Heat olive oil in pan over medium heat. Beat egg in a bowl with a splash of milk. On a plate or in a shallow pan, mix 1 part breadcrumbs with 1 part flour. Dip eggplant in egg then coat in breadcrumb mixture. Cook in pan until breadcrumbs on both sides are lightly brown.

Place eggplant in baking dish.  Once you have breaded/pan-cooked all the eggplant, pour the remaining tomato sauce over the eggplant.  Sprinkle generously with parmesan.  (You can also add other cheeses such as mozarella or asiago, as desired.)

Cook in toaster over at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until cheese is lightly browned.


Served Best With:  Salad; Glass of Wine; Garlic Bread

Candida Modification:  Lose the milk and cheese

Spice & The Single Girl - From the Beginning

8:00 pm. Tuesday night. Home.  Once again I stand here staring at my toaster oven with mixed emotions of contempt and gratitude.  I take a sip of wine as I check the timer.  Five minutes left on my eggplant parmesan.  Yes, I am cooking eggplant parmesan in a toaster oven - homemade, from-scratch, farmer's market eggplant parmesan.  This is part art + part science experiment + part necessity +  part curiosity.  This is Home Ec meets College Dorm meets Gordon Ramsey meets my life.

I am 28.  In my food life, I went from mother to dorm to domestic - only to find myself recently single and living in a bachelor apartment.  Bachelor apartment. As in one room, no kitchen.  Fully equipped with a microwave and a mini-fridge.

Up until a few months ago, I was cooking quiches and Sunday roasts and enchiladas and apple pies and homemade soup and scones - all in what now seems like a spacious 60 square-foot kitchen.  And now ... now ... well, now, I am staring a toaster oven, unplugging a hot plate, juggling counterspace and trying to figure out how the hell to cook for just one.

Don't get me wrong - I love to cook!  I love healthy, fresh, in-season food.  I love cooking for others and baking from scratch.  I love fresh vegetables and farmer's markets.  I love herbs and spices and everything nice-s.  I love trying to cook something new.  I love entertaining guests.  And I even love a good challenge.

And a challenge this is - this 25 x 41 inches of counterspace, this freezer-less minifridge, this cupboard-space challenged kitchenette, this cooking for one.  But I thought I must not be the only one - living in a Bahchelor apartment, trying to eat healthy and on a budget.  So to you solo chefs, you Bachelor-pad bakers, even you full-kitchen singles and you voyeurs along for the ride - I present to you:  Spice & the Single Girl:  Adventures in Hot-Plate-Toaster-Oven Cooking for One.  Bon Apetit!