I recently moved from California to Chicago, and I'm trying to figure
out how to cook the less expensive varieties of fish that are
available he tilapia and bass, for example. My experiments so far
has been less than rewarding. In one case I forced myself to eat the
thing because, damn it, I paid for it and cooked it. In another case I
gave up and threw it out.

The bass tasted like it was poorly cleaned and undercooked, neither of
which was the case. The tilapia just tasted like mud.

I'm following recipes, and I'm not accustomed to creating such
disasters. Is there some trick to cooking these fish that I need to
learn? Or do they just taste bad because they taste bad?

My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.