Project Kitchen: Cooking is not as hard as it seems!

As I may have mentioned in perhaps a previous post, I had decided to, on Friday night, go out and cook some fish. I wanted to test out my new cook book and see if the recipes were really as good and easy as they seemed. After spending about forty minutes flipping through the pages, I settled upon a great meal, Pan-Fried Tilapia. The fish fillet meal would prove to be a bit involving as I soon came to find out.

In order to prepare the meal at hand I needed several ingredients. However, before I could get the ingredients for the meal at hand, I needed to also get some tools to cook with. The things that I needed were of course a whisk, a measuring cup, measuring spoons, and a pan. The meal required several things.

2 tablespoons of all-pupose flour
1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon of dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon of curry powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/8 teaspoon of pepper
2 Tilapia fillets
1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil

Total cost of the items was around $10-$15 (would be cheaper if I had several of these things already)
After placing all of the ingredients on the counter I then took out the fish from the freezer.
The Tilapia actually came in a package of two fillets, which is more than enough for one person. I immediately took it out of the package and patted it dry. While that was sitting out, I immediately gathered all of the dry ingrediantes and began to mix them in a bowl.
Once I had poured all of the dry ingredients into the bowl, I mixed it up for a few minutes with the whisk. This part was actually fun, for I got to see the powdery stuff go up and down and travel all across the bowl. I loved the smell that came up. Most likely I smelled the garlic and curry. I couldn't wait to try it. After doing this, I immediately poured this dry concoction onto a plate. As I had already mentioned the fillets were literally patted dry (the fish were a bit wet so i patted them dry with a paper towel, I couldnt find parchment paper). The fish fillets were then placed into the dry concoction. I attempted to coat it generously with the mix. Meanwhile, I went ahead and turned on the stovetop to medium high heat. After waiting for about two minutes, I then added the Extra Virgin Olive Oil to the skillet. After waiting for twenty seconds, I then placed the fillets onto the skillet.After waiting for about two minutes I then flipped it over so that the other side could get cooked. After another two minutes I prepared to take them off the skillet. I actually kept it on the skillet for a bit longer, because it was looking a bit pale, but all in all I did take it out before it sustained burning. To complement the meal I fixed some of the mixed vegetables. This allowed ample time for me to clean up the kitchen and for the fish to cool down. I would give myself an 8 out of 10 for this meal. The only thing that I could have done better was to have actually practiced flipping the fillets over. For I actually splashed some of the sauce onto the stovetop and onto myself (it hurt!). But then again, I guess that is a risk to take when flipping stuff over. I believe that the next meal that I will do will either be Pesto Chicken Roll Ups or Fettuccine Alfredo. Ultimately, this meal was quite easy to fix up, therefore proving that for this meal, cooking is assumed to be harder than it actually is.