You ever get soooo hungry you just start throwing stuff in a pot and hope it comes out good? Well that's how this recipe came about. I was going for something Asian inspired as I'm a lover of most all Asian cuisine (as well just about every other cuisine lol but I've been in an asain mood as of late). Since I had recently done the ginger soy glaze I was searching for something similar but sweeter and remembered I had a jar of mandarin oranges I got from Wally World for all of $1 so I figured why not?
I'm really not a "cookbook chef" or any type of chef for that matter but I like to get creative in the kitchen and when I do I never measure anything! So I'm going to give rough estimates of what I think I used for this sauce. Luckily I was forward-thinking enough to jot down everything I put in the sauce, just not how much. I know that the base is mostly mandarin juice and roughly equal amounts of soy sauce and rice wine vinegar with some honey or brown sugar (whatever you have) to sweeten to your liking.
As for the sides I've been on a brown rice kick for a while because I just like rice and decided to replace my beloved white rice with something healthier, so brown it is...for now. But I'm always down to try new food and have been hearing so much about quinoa (not pronounced qui-no-a, like I thought but keen-wa, boujie) plus my mom (who is like my health guru and is also who told me the proper way to pronounce it after laughing at my attempt) been on it, so I decided to get a brown rice/quinoa mix from walmart to slowly introduce myself to it. I believe it was olive oil and rosemary blend or something...wish I would've took a pic of the box but it's not hard to find in the rice aisle. This was also my first time cooking with fresh green beans so I was really hoping everything came out good and it did and was awesome. I impressed myself with this one! But let me stop blabbing and get to the good stuff!!
For the glaze:
*this estimate is so you can make the general base and add more of whatever to get the taste, it's a sweet glaze with a twing of sour*
1/3 cup mandarin orange juice/syrup
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar (you can use apple cider or white vinegar but it'll taste a little different)
2 T honey or brown sugar
1 T garlic
1 T melted butter
1 t grated ginger (optional, I just had a piece left in the fridge so I threw it in)
Everything else:
4 tilapia filets (or any other white meat)
1/4 cup mandarin orange segments
2 cups cooked rice or quinoa
2 cups fresh green beans
2 T cooking oil
Half a lemon (optional)
Salt and pepper (or good ol Tony's)
Directions:
1. Make your rice, quinoa or blend of both first since brown rice takes some time to cook
2. Whisk together all the glaze ingredients and adjust to your liking if necessary
3. Place fish in a baking dish and pour glaze sauce over it plus 1 T cooking oil. Bake at 400 for about 10 minutes or so, it will be white and flake easily when done
4. While your fish is baking go ahead and rinse your beans and cut off the tips. Coat them with the other T of cooking oil plus salt and pepper or other seasoning and sauté them until tender. I like a bit of crunch in mine but cook to your liking
5. When your fish is done, remove them to a plate, pour off glaze into a skillet, toss in mandarin orange segments and cook until it thickens. You can leave the oranges whole but I chopped mine up a bit to get more orangey flavor. You can also add flour or cornstarch to the sauce to speed up the process
6. Plate your rice and beans, put one or two pieces of fish on a plate and drizzle glaze over fish and rice (if you want). Squeeze lemon over green beans and voila! Feast!!!
I hope I wasn't too confusing, I always feel like I'm rambling when trying to explain my cooking methods lol. Also all of my recipes are pretty flexible when it comes to main meats, so don't skip over something just because you don't have what I did, sauces are not picky they love all meats. Til next time, bon apetit! =)
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