Marinated Red Tilapia

Starting with a great, fresh fish, there are many ways to prepare red tilapia.  Being very fortunate to have lots of ingredients that I can use as a marinate at the farm, I decided to experiment a bit to see how the flavors will blend.  I enjoyed it so I am sharing it here.  This marinate can be applied to 1-1.5kg of fish.  Ensuring that the fish is fresh and farmed in "running water" makes a difference to the final taste of the dish.

Ingredients for marinate:

1. 2 stalks of lemon grass (serai)
2. 1 yellow onion
3. Fresh tumeric (kunyit)
4. 3 calamansi (limau kasturi)
5. Salt to taste

I prefer using a mortar pestle (lesung batu) as opposed to a blender so I placed all the ingredients for the marinate together and pounded them until they became a paste.  I then added some salt and the juice from the calamansi - I added this after the other ingredients were pounded to prevent it from "jumping out" of the pestle.  To speed up this process, I had sliced the lemon grass, onion and tumeric.  Try to use fresh tumeric as it does make a difference to the taste as opposed to using tumeric powder - this will also add better nutrients to the dish.  There are numerous health benefits from the lemon grass, tumeric and calamansi so this is a healthy way to prepare the fish at no expense to the taste.

The marinate was then applied to the fish and left to marinate for 1 hour.  You can marinate it longer if you wish - I was just hungry hence the 1-hour marinate.
This fish can then be grilled, cooked over charcoal or fried.  For a low-calorie option, you might want to avoid deep-frying the fish.  as a note, there is no need to add any flavor enhancers as by using fresh ingredients that bursts with flavor, your palate will enjoy the experience.  In my hurry to eat the fish, I forgot to take pictures of it done :)