Baked Flounder, Smoked Gouda Macaroni and Cheese

Today was day 25 of cooking from THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT and I made 2 dishes for dinner tonight: Baked Flounder with Fresh Lemon Pepper, and Smoked Gouda Macaroni and Cheese. Here's our thoughts on these two dishes:

BAKED FLOUNDER WITH FRESH LEMON PEPPER, pretty good...

The flavors of the rub on the fish were really strong... garlic, cracked pepper, lemon zest, olive oil, and salt. Not much to it, but it sure packed a punch of flavors, and pretty spicy as well. But it was good. The fish was so thin I was concerned that the cooking time of 8 minutes at 425 degrees was going to be too much, so I checked it after 6 minutes and it did need to go a little longer. I ended up cooking it for 8 minutes and it was cooked perfectly. This was a good dish, and quick and easy to make. My hubby liked it as well, it's one I may consider making again.

SMOKED GOUDA MACARONI AND CHEESE, better than I thought it would be...

I've mentioned before that I'm not really a fan of baked macaroni and cheese, but this one was actually pretty good, we both liked it. There was a LOT of spinach, and I mean a LOT... 5 cups of chopped, fresh spinach, to be exact, for 4 servings (which is really more like 6-8 servings when you're serving it as a side dish). The photo in the cookbook doesn't look like it has as much spinach in it, so when I was mixing it all together and saw how much spinach there was compared to the macaroni, I was afraid it was not going to be good and the spinach would be too overpowering. My hubby thought it was ruined when he saw it.

However, it was very good, and you really couldn't taste the spinach flavor in it much at all. We were very pleasantly surprised and both of us liked it much better than we thought we would.

There are some issues with this cookbook that I think could be more clear or precise, or described better. The spinach in this recipe is a perfect example. It says "5 cups coarsely chopped fresh spinach", which I take to mean chop the spinach first and measure out 5 cups of CHOPPED spinach. However, it probably would be been better (and look more like the picture in the cookbook) if it had been "5 cups of spinach, coarsely chopped", which would have meant measure out 5 cups of spinach, and then chop it. At any rate, it worked the way I made it, though I think it should have been the other way around.

The recipe says it will serve 4, and since I was just cooking for the 2 of us I considered cutting the recipe in half. But dear hubby loves pasta so much he said no way, he'd eat more than his allotted portion and would be happy with leftovers. We have 2/3 of the macaroni and cheese leftover so he'll have a lot to eat over the next couple of days, which he's happy about.

A good recipe that I would make again. Hubby really liked it a lot.

48 recipes down, 499 more to go (FINALLY below the 500 mark!).