Coconut Crusted Tilapia Spinach Arugula Salad w/ Ginger Dressing

If you eat seafood and love coconut and love ginger, than you will love this. This salad is kind of the lazy version -- but it doesn't taste lazy. I promise. It's lazy because I didn't make the ginger dressing from scratch, I just used a pre-made bottled dressing. And I didn't go all out when it came to making coconut crust for the tilapia, either. Normally, if making coconut crusted anything, you would use eggs or a beer batter to make a perfect crispy golden crust. I didn't really care too much about all of that -- I just wanted coconut. So that's what I did. I found that it browned quicker than it probably would have had I made the batter the all-out way. But as long as you keep it on low/medium heat, you'll be fine. If you use a prewashed spinach-arugula mix (like I did) then all the prepping involved is breading and frying the tilapia. Meaning this recipe is very easy.

You Will Need

1. 2/3 cup shredded coconut (sweetened)

2. Ginger dressing

3. 1/3 cup flour

4. A large plate or bowl full of clean baby spinach and arugula

5. Two tilapia fillets

6. Salt + pepper to taste

First, mix the flour and coconut shreds in a small mixing bowl and add your salt + pepper to the mixture as well.

Then sprinkle + rub the flour mixture on all sides of the tilapia. Since I skipped using eggs or beer batter, I gently pressed on the chunkier coconut pieces so they would adhere better to the fish. If you want them to stick more easily, first cover the tilapia in a thin layer of whipped egg before covering with the flour mixture.

Heat a frying pan to medium heat (or slightly lower depending on your pan) and coat with coconut oil. You can use any light oil, but coconut oil is a healthy, super light oil and will give it a coconut boost.
I sprinkled on some extra coconut/flour mixture before placing into the frying pan. Cook on low-medium heat for about 2-3 minutes and/or until the coconut flakes brown.

When browned, flip the fish over to cook the other side. Leave on low-medium heat for 2-5 minutes. This depends on the thickness of your pan and tilapia fillets. The ones I used were somewhat small.

Fill a large plate with the spinach and arugula, top with ginger dressing, and then cover with your coconut crusted tilapia. If you don't want the salad leaves to wilt, wait around 10 minutes for the tilapia fillets to cool a bit before laying on top of the salad. Then serve and enjoy!

If you don't eat meat, replace the tilapia with water chestnuts, soy beans, or cashews and fry a handful of coconut shreds in a pan until browned to sprinkle on top. This will give you the coconut-ginger flavor without having to use coconut crusted fish. Yum.