Parmesan Herbed Flounder with Bread Crumbs.

When we first arrived in Idaho, settled down in our house and started shopping for our groceries, it was difficult to find Asian food. Its a necessity to cook everyday, as the guys had to bring lunchboxes to work. There's hardly time to drive around to buy food, plus, the only food available to purchase was Burger King. Well, I'm a loving wife, who cares about her husband's diet, and I wouldn't want him chewing on that everyday.

We've come a long way, it started out that he was the one experimenting in the kitchen and doing all the cooking on his own. Then I started having slight interest, and tookover some of the dishes. As I studied more and more recipes and foodie blogs online, I started doing more and more of the cooking, trying out new dishes. It has now come to a point that I've completely taken over the cooking, with joy, and him, taking over the laptop and tv, with greater joy. His tummy is happy too. With new flavours and new dishes to try all the time.

I prefer dishes with lesser ingredients, easy to prepare, but a burst of flavours. It isn't easy to find reasonably priced fish where we live. In Singapore, we can easily buy fish in the market. But here, there's only supermarket. No wet markets. They upsell the fishes in the "fresh" section, but the colour didn't look fresh, and its probably frozen before. Its expensive! We didn't eat fish in the first few months that we were here, and it came to a point, when we wanted to eat fish, we'd go for Fillet O Fish. How pathetic is that!

On one of my afternoon walks, I decided to walk to the commissary and check out the food available. When the husband isn't around, I can take a good long walk around and study each ingredient available to me, so I can take a mental note to what I can find within my reach, and look out for new  recipes to try. I headed to the frozen seafood section. What surprised me was, there were lotsa fish available there, and while at first look, the prices were $10 and above, at closer look, there's many fillets inside. We've been paying $1 per small fillet before that, its almost and indulgence to have fish in USA. So when I saw that buying fish that was frozen before, the price was more affordable and can be a good addition to our meals.. I bought a packet of flounder to try first. It was the cheapest of the lot. And I'm sure, I'll be hitting on Tilapia and salmon next.

Here's the recipe for my Parmesan Herbed Flounder with Bread Crumbs. We originally wanted to fry it, but I decided on a healthier baked version.

6 flounder fillets
4/5 tbsp McCormick Parmesan Herb
2 tablespoon dried parsley
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup panko bread crumbs

1. Preheat oven to 400F.
2. Season the first with salt and pepper.
3. Coat the fish with a light coat of olive oil.4. In a dry bowl, mix the panko bread crumbs with parmesan herb and parsley.
5. Press the bread crumb mix into fillets.
6. Lay the fish in baking tray lined with aluminium foil.
7. Bake for about 10 mins and turn the fish over.
8. Bake for another 8 - 10 mins until fish is cooked through.

Although baking it was a healthier route, I would probably try to fry it the next time around. It was flaking too easily and the fish kept breaking up as we tried to pick it up with a fork. It was quite dry and not really juicy. But it might be due to our fillets being too thin and small. Might be good to bake when cooked with a thicker cut. The seasoning was tasty and just right. Hubby thought his had a little too much cheese. But I liked mine the way it was. Cheesy and tasty. ;)

Let me know how yours turned out! ;)