recipizzle

here's where i pretend to know some crap that y'all don't.
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if there's one thing i've learned in my 30,000-odd meals on this earth it's that any creamy sauce that is orange-hued is AWESOME (zax sauce, thousand island, etc). it is also usually very bad for you. so i made one up to get around this (feel free to give into to the urge you're feeling right now to bow down before the splendor that is my culinary prowess).

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jesse and i first discovered the deliciousness of "remoulade" at bonehead's grill in atlantic station. it was a creamy, spicy sauce that made grilled fish/shrimp even better. it also was the reason that my response to the question, "would you like some zucchini?" went from "thanks, but i'd rather eat hiter's ass-gangrene" to "manna from heaven! sweet nectar of life!" we used to buy pre-made remoulade from boar's head at the deli section of publix, but it is way expensive and artery clogging. so now whenever we make fish we almost always make some squash-type veggie to go with it (squash, zucchini, eggplant) so we can whip up a little batch of the sauce to go on everything. we call it (as of this second) "giddy-up aioli."

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this meal took like 15 minutes start to finish. and it has about 250 total calories. displayed on our wedding china (jokes. we have none)
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EGGPLANT AND TILAPIA (recipes sound so bossy):

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put the oven on 425. do it NOW!
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slice an entire eggplant into 1/2 thick rounds, arrange on a cookie sheet. spray with pam or brush with olive oil. sprinkle a little chili power on all the rounds and then salt liberally. pop them in the oven on the top rack

spray a hot saute pan with canola/olive oil spray and then dust the pan with old bay. pop in a few fillets of a tilapia. cook about 5 minutes on med-high heat. spray the top (still raw) side with more spray and then coat it with old bay. flip and cook 5 minutes. turn off the stove.

AIOLI:

while the fish cools a bit, get a little bowl (like the teeny glad disposable above). and mix all this up in it with a fork til it's consistent and the clumps are gone...unlike mine above:

-2 Tbs of light mayo (you could use fat-free too, its not in there for the flavor, its just there as a creamy base for the sauce)

-1 Tbs horseradish (just trust me)

-1tsp of minced garlic (we have a big-ass jar we use...no chopping fresh stuff)

-2 ample squirts of lemon juice (probably about 1 tbs of juice...i just taste as i go)

-several (10-20) splooges of texas pete hot sauce or tabsco

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so your eggplant have been in there about 15 minutes. pull them out, put everything on a plate and eat up. (the aioli is also great to snazzify potatoes or pasta if you wanted a starchy side as well)

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you can use the aioli as a dipping sauce or just douse everything on the plate with it. it makes eating a new veggie way less intimidating. i can now eat lot of veggies plain (i choose not to at home) because i started out trying them with the aioli/remoulade as a safety net of flava-flav.
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*i have to give credit for the eggplant rounds to my german volleyball teammate at tech and former roommate alex preiss. she used to make this stuff ALL the time and it grossed the hell out of me. i thought that they looked like the shrivelled and discarded foreskins of barney the dinosaur's male relatives. of course i had never even tried eggplant so my judgement was really well-placed and thought out. having grown up a bit since then i tried grilled eggplant one time and kind of liked it, though i found it slimey. i remembered alex making her little snack in the oven and tried it out at home. it is awesome. don't be scurred of the eggy-plants, yall.*

oh, like you haven't thought about barney's wiener before now