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Hello Friends! I’m doing this year’s Blogathon on July 25 and blog every 30 minutes for 24 hours to raise money for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society. If you are able, please sponsor me and make a donation pledge.

Butter. I love it and there’s no denying it. When I was really, really young, vegetables (snow peas, carrots, green beans and corn) cooked in butter and served with a sprinkle of salt blew my mind. These days I enjoy adding butter to meat and fish. It makes everything much better, just like bacon. I think they’re siblings.

Here, instead of frying basa fish, I baked it in butter:

Oh, and it was so good with the coconut rice!

Baked Basa Fillets in Garlic and Butter

Ingredients:

• 2 fillet slabs of basa fish (mine was 1.4 lb in total), or any white fish of your preference
• 3 tbsp butter, melted
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp fresh ground pepper
• 2 tbsp chopped garlic
• 1/2 a lemon, cut in 1/2
• a handful of cilantro, roughly chopped, for garnish

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 400°F.

2. In a baking dish, mix the butter, garlic, salt and pepper. Place the fish fillets into the mixture, and then turn them so both sides are coated. Cover the dish with aluminum foil.

3. Bake for 10 minutes, then take out of the oven and turn off the heat. Squeeze the lemon, a quarter lemon for each fillet. Sprinkle with cilantro and cover again with aluminum foil. Place back in the oven for another 5-10 minutes, until the meat becomes flaky and the thinner edges begin to have some color. You will notice that you might end up with a lot of juice in the pan. That’s fine. You can either toss it, or spoon a little over the fillets to be served.

4. Slice and serve with rice.

To make coconut rice, use this proportion: For every cup of uncooked white rice, use 1/4 cup coconut milk (canned is perfectly fine) and 3/4 cups water.