If you gave me cheese and bread for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I am a happy girl. Few things give me such incredible happiness. Growing up one of the staples in the house was an Armenian flat bread called Lavash and Feta that we ate...
You like opening up presents? Of course, who doesn't!
How about presents filled with succulent fish filets, perfect al dente vegetables and the scent of wine with the first piercing of your package?
This preparation is one of my favorite single person go to meals. It's also the equivalent of the 'one pot meal'. Almost no clean up. It involves preparing, cooking and eating in the same container. Which in this case is parchment paper. If you have never used this baking paper, you really need to run and get some immediately. It's one of the staples of a properly stocked pantry.(It's also a great last minute substitute for gift-wrapping paper) It's a wonderful product because no food will ever stick to it. You could also certainly use foil instead of parchment, but you would have to make sure you lubricate your foil, or use a nonstick.
So basically what we're going to do is put a piece of thin fish filet, some thin cut vegetables, and some wine (you could use chicken stock) in a pocket of parchment paper. You can use any type of fish, as long as its pretty thin. If you have a think cut of fish then you would just slice it lengthwise just to insure it gets cooked through. We will fold it up and bake in the oven. This will steam the stuff inside our pocket leaving us with a delicious and quite impressive meal that can be done in less than twenty minutes! Once cooked you have your own Pocket o'goodness to place entirely on your plate and feast.
Using en papillote is an extremely healthy cooking preparation because of the lack of oil used in the process. Any ingredients you put inside the pocket will steam together along with the help of the liquid you add. I love using wine because it adds big flavor without doing much. This is a great recipe because you could play with it so many different ways. You could use almost any vegetable you have laying around your kitchen; squash, onions, potatoes, broccoli, green beans, peppers, anything! Since you’re only cooking this meal for 15 minutes, it is important to cut your vegetables think and small enough to insure you properly cook them through. Some recipes call for cooking some of the vegetables a little bit before you assemble the pockets, but I don’t do this. I simply like my vegetables with a little crisp. Plus, the difference in taste is not significant enough for me to take that extra step and sauté my vegetables before I assemble my pockets.
This is not my love letter to Butter. This is, fact. Butter makes everything better. Everyone knows this. What’s better than butter you might ask? How about butter with garlic? This stuff is so good you’ll have to keep yourself from biting into it like an ice cream...
"Sexy?" Not a word that comes to mind when talking about garlic. Garlic can be an intimidating ingredient to work with but it really is one of the most sensual, and tasty things to work with. I was taught a few different ways to chop a garlic clove...