What I Made for Dinner Last Night

I thought it might be a good idea from time to time to chronicle what I've made for dinner. People always complain that it's too much of a chore to cook, or that they don't have time, and I want to show just how easy it can be.

Yesterday I went food shopping. Since our local grocery store has an excellent fish department, I always make it a point to buy fish for dinner the day I shop.

Usually I go shopping with no preconceived idea of what fish I'll buy. I just see what looks good, or is on sale and take it from there. Yesterday, there was some beautiful lemon sole on sale for $5.99 a pound. With a price like that, how can you pass it up? I bought 1 1/2 pounds of the sole then rounded up the other ingredients to make dinner.

I don't have an actual recipe because this is a standard way that I prepare fish. I just throw things in the pan, bake and serve. It's basically a one pan meal, although if you add brown rice (like I do from time to time), it's one pan and one pot.

So last night I took a large Pyrex baking pan from the cup-board in threw in a pint of cherry tomatoes, a cup of pitted Kalamata olives, six peeled garlic cloves and five ounces of fresh baby spinach. I peeled and roughly chopped up two red onions and threw them in the pan as well. I drizzled everything with olive oil and sprinkled on salt and pepper. The whole conglomeration got mixed up and put in a 425 degree oven for 40 minutes.

At that point I pulled out the pan from the oven, drizzled in some Balsamic vinegar and mixed. I then salt and peppered the sole and put it back in the pan and drizzled some more balsamic vinegar on top of the fish. I returned everything to the oven and baked another 15 to 20 minutes until the fish was cooked through. I served everything over brown rice and sprinkled with fresh chopped parsley.

Overall effort to prepare was less then fifteen minutes, although it did take close to an hour to cook (I worked during that time).

As I mentioned, you can make this meal with just about any fish. Cod and swordfish both work really well, although you have to adjust the cooking time because both take longer to cook.