Recently we went to Red Lobster for dinner, and I rediscovered my love of their baked stuffed sole. It’s amazing in its simplicity and its overall presentation. The dish itself is nothing more than two small fillets stacked upon each other with a filling layer between them – much like a sandwich. It’s a baked dish that’s topped with smoked paprika near the end of the bake cycle, and topped with lovely white wine sauce plated.

I’ve ordered this dish a couple of times before when dining at Red Lobster now. I always remember it being so tasty, and this time round was no exception. I have now taken to making it at home on random Sundays. It makes for a lovely lunch or dinner meal. I highly recommend trying this dish. It’s a winner, even to those who aren’t big on fish, for several reasons.

1. It’s versatile in terms of the the kind of whitefish you use. Any whitefish will do, really. I use whatever we have on hand, and it’s never guaranteed to be the same two times in a row.

2. The filling can be made up of anything you have on hand or dream up – the choice is yours how fancy or how simple you make it.

3. The sauce can be a lovely white sauce, salsa, vegetable ragout, or nothing at all – your choice. Go nuts. 🙂

The version I normally make uses haddock fillets with a lovely ricotta filling topped with some fettuccine sauce over top, but this last one I didn’t bother with the sauce. I wanted a light lunch to carry me over the afternoon to dinner a few hours later.

Filling for 2 – 4 servings.

Auntie Stacey’s Baked Stuffed Fish:
1/2 C ricotta (low fat will work well)
S&P to taste
1/8 C diced red peppers
2 tsp fresh lime juice
1/4 C chopped parsley

This knock-off version of the Red Lobster’s Broccoli Stuffed Sole from AllRecipes.com uses ingredients like rice and broccoli which is perfectly in line with Red Losbster’s ingredient list, but again I used what I have on hand, and the last time I made this I didn’t feel like making rice and I was also out of broccoli, so I went the rustic route.

It was delicious. And very filling. The whitefish fillets I buy tend to be very long, so I could have easily cut the final fish in half and fed four instead of two. This is a fantastic recipe to add to your weekly repertoire. You can easily make it up the night before or in the morning, and pop it in the oven when you get home from work the next night. Give it a go!

So, I have been thinking a lot about my favourite soup recipe, and one of the things we love most about it is it includes pasta shells and meatballs. So lovely, and tasty. And that soup got me thinking about meatballs. How much we love meatballs specifically.

‘Mmmmm, meatballs…

Thinking back to when I was a kid – and my husband has similar childhood memories – we don’t recall our mothers ever having the time to make their own meatballs, but they always sourced some delicious all-beef meatballs for spaghetti. I like store bought just fine; I’m not a snob, but when I have time, I like to play around with recipes to find that elusive meatball that I will want to make forever and ever.

And thus far, no luck. I’ve tried many meatball versions, but none of them are made more than a few times in our kitchen. I call that a definite lack of sticking power. And since neither my mother or my mother-in-law have a great tired and true recipe to hand down to me, I have been forced to do recipe developing research. *gasp*

After some small online searching, I found a light and fluffy meatball recipe brought to us by the fantastic Lucinda Scala Quinn from Mad Hungry. I love this woman, and everything she makes is so scrumptious without being pretentious, complicated or over the top. She makes every day food. <– Ha. Get it?

Now, this is a meatball recipe I can get excited about. I love ricotta cheese. I’m always looking for new ways to use up a tub of it at home before it turns and stinks up the rest of the fridge. Oy. I hate wasting money, too. I’m not cheap but I do feel bad when I leave perfectly good food in my fridge to fend for itself. It would be like me ignoring that bamboo plant my best friend gave me till it starts to wilt and I have to think hard about when I last watered it.

{ahem}

I digress. Give this recipe a shot. I plan to this weekend. I will report back, with pictures, and we can compare notes. Sound good to you? Ok, then. Let’s do this!