Fried Tilapia Fillet with Red Onions and Olive Tartar Sauce on Pane Rustico
There are everyday sandwiches and then there are heavenly combinations like this one the sweet, white flesh of tilapia crisply fried and sauced with olive-flecked tartar sauce. This is a sandwich for company, room temperature food of exactly the right kind-full of flavor, sophisticated, but easy to make. Accompany it with a bottle of good chilled white wine; then while away a summer afternoon.
For very practical reasons, we suggest you fry the fillets in advance. In that way, any smell of fish, which deters some people from cooking fish at home, should have disappeared from your house by the time you are ready to eat. To keep things really easy, make the tartar sauce ahead of time, too. Which brings us to the bread: Pane rustico, a variation of country bread, is crusty and not too flavorful. It is the contrast of textures-crustiness on the outside, softness within-that makes it so appealing. You will have to assemble the sandwiches before serving, but even so, when it comes to dishes that are good for entertaining, these tasty sandwiches figure near the top of the easy-to-prepare list.
Ingredients
- 2 red onions
- Juice of 3 limes
- FOR THE TARTAR SAUCE
- ¼ cup pitted kalamata olives
- 2 tablespoons pitted green olives
- ¾ cup mayonnaise
- ¼ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
- 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
- 1 tablespoon grainy mustard
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 6 tilapia fillets about 6 ounces each
- ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 12 slices pane rustico
Instructions
- Peel, trim, and slice the onions. Put the onion slices in a bowl and pour the lime juice over them, turning and separating the rings slightly. Let
- stand for at least 1 hour.
- Make the kalamata tartar sauce: Chop the kalamata and
- green olives fine.
- In a bowl, fold the olives into the mayonnaise and add the parsley, vinegar,
- and mustard.
- Season the flour with the salt and pepper and spread it out on a platter. Roll each tilapia fillet in the flour and shake off the excess.
- In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat until hot. Add the fish fillets, in batches, and fry them for 3 minutes on each side, transferring them as they are done to paper towels to drain.
- Put 1 fried fillet each on 6 of the bread slices. Spoon plenty of olive tartar sauce over each fillet, and top with a few onion rings. Cover with a slice of the remaining bread, cut each sandwich in half, and serve.