"Wrap it Up"

Betcha you thought that this was gonna be a blog on one of those hideous sandwiches where huge, multicolored cardboard tortillas are used as the bread, huh?

Did I just reveal a prejudice against them? Really? I MUST learn to moderate my language.

Well, it ain't. This is about a wonderful classic technique that I had forgotten about called cooking "en papillote"

Now, the Francophiles out there may have very good reason to complain that I am, yet again, fracturing the French language. And when the purists amongst you read the rest of this, you may feel that I am not staying true to the technique.

Get over it. Do I sound crankier than usual today? Could very well be.

But to the root of things "en papillote" means "in paper." It's a style of cooking where you enclose what you're making in parchment, seal it up, and then bake it, at a very high temperature. When it works, the gasses from the food cannot escape, they blow up the parchment, and when you bring the portion to the table, in the paper, you get to warn the guest "keep your face away from it when you open it, it's HOT," and then s/he cuts it open, wafts of delicious vapor come up, there's the "MMMMMM" sound and everyone sits down and eats a wonderful meal.

There's a lot going for this technique. Probably the one that will interest us all here is that it is FAST. When food is encased like this, heat cannot escape. So food cooks faster. A relatively thick piece of fish, for instance, takes fifteen minutes. Another thing going for it is that you don't have dishes to wash. Remember that stupid commercial for aluminum foil where "Betty" says "No, let ME clean up," and then crumbles the foil and tosses it? Well, that's what you'll be doing here. Now, NOT that any of us are worrying about things like FAT... but this is a way to make a relatively low calorie dish as well. Again, because everything is staying right where it is, your flavors are concentrated. You get a very light water based sauce, and a very easy dish.

Fish and chicken lend themselves to this technique best, as do vegetables, by themselves. In truth, I only use it for fish. I'm not much of a fan for steamed chicken, or vegetables, but fish, probably because of its structure and flavor, works really well to my palate. But not ALL fish do. While you CAN use what I call the "red, muscular, steak" fish, like tuna and swordfish, I think this is a waste of the instrinsic qualities of those fish. Steamed or baked swordfish is just ok, steamed or baked tuna is vile. Stick to the "white" fish, like monkfish, cod, or, as I made it last night, grouper. If you're staying local to the NY area, at this time of year it's going to be monk, cod, flounder, or maybe pollack if you're lucky. Not much else this time of year. You could do it with skate as well, but again, this is a fish that tastes better to me in the pan rather than the oven.

The first times that I made this, I spend a long time prepping vegetables, cutting them into teeny teeny bits, so that I could make sure that they cooked fast enough. I would carefully spoon a tablespoon each of celery, carrots, potatoes, leeks, or whatever else I was using in with the fish. These days, I don't bother. I make the veggies separataely. What I DO use with the fish are things like slices of citrus (last night, it was meyer lemon), herbs, a bit of olive oil or butter, olives (without the pits), things like that. Here's how it goes.

Preheat your oven to 425. Then, get a big piece of FOIL (you CAN do this with parchment paper, but 'fess up: you got any of it in your house? If you do, grand. Then instead of folding the foil at the end, crimp the edges together, maybe painting a little egg white to keep them together. The rest of you stick with the foil directions.). Put down a "bed" for your fish, of something like sliced onions, or citrus, or something like that. The reason you're going to do this is to make sure the fish doesn't stick to the foil. Then, your fish goes on top of that, and season it. Use salt, pepper, thyme, anything you like on a baked piece of fish. Put about a scant tablespoon of good olive oil over each portion of fish (by "portion" I'm talking 6-8 ounces here), or the equivalent of unsalted butter. Your choice. Add some more citrus if you want to, and some incidentals, also if you want to, like pitted olives, chopped scallions, cat yummies (NO. Just seeing if you're paying atttention), very fine diced veggies if you're feeling ambitious, and then perhaps a splash (not more than one or two tablespoons), of white wine or vermouth. Then fold up the foil TIGHTLY. Do this for each portion of fish. Now, lay them all on a baking sheet, and pop them in the oven. You'll bake this for about twenty minutes. Let it rest for a few minutes when it comes out of the oven, because what they say about gas escaping IS true.

You can serve this in the foil, but if you've been hitting the wine while you're waiting, as I so frequently do, you don't want to risk getting foil stuck in your teeth, or your guest's. So get a spatula or pancake flipper or something like that and move it all to a plate. Make sure you pour what sauce is in the packet over the fish as well.

I made this last night with grouper, together with saffron rice (do you need for me to explain how to do that? I will if you want), and some steamed broccoli with olive oil. If I were serving it for guests, I might have used broccoli, because white fish, with a white vegetable, made for a bit of blandness, while the bright yellow orange, with green and white, would have been real pretty. And I timed myself. It took less than 40 minutes to bring this to the table, together with a spinach salad in a creme fraiche dressing (Ok, I'm going to teach you how to make your own creme fraiche. Take a pint of cream. Put it in a quart container. Spoon in three or four tablespoons of yogurt or buttermilk. Seal the container, shake it, and leave it on a counter, UNrefrigerated for three or four days. Leave it longer if you like it more sour). Then refrigerate it. ).

A 40 minute dinner that is good for you, healthy and easy, without much of a clean up? I think we can all use that .

So give it a try. If you want to, substititute chicken, but do know that chicken can take longer. It's a denser protein than fish, so it will take more time, perhaps as much as half an hour. But it will still be good, and healthy for you.

So go and have some ice cream