Whisk Wednesdays—Snapper with fennel en papillote

Cooking en papillote means putting the ingredients inside a parchment paper pouch and baking it in the oven. The paper holds in the moisture while cooking. This moisture flavors the fish along with the aromatics and liquid to make a tender and subtle tasting meal. This is a good method for any delicate fish and can even be used for chicken, vegetables and fruit. Before baking the fish in its pouch, the fennel is sliced and pan-fried in butter and then spooned into each pouch. By far, this is one of the simplest recipes so far!

Here is Alton Brown's episode about this cooking method: The Pouch Principle.

Here is a great article about it: The Envelope, Please: Cooking En Papillote.

Recipe

Serves 4

2 x ¾ pound snapper fillets
2 large bulbs fennel
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
16 fresh basil leaves
4 tablespoons dry white wine
4 teaspoons Pastis or Ricard (optional)
You can find the recipe for Snapper with fennel en papillote in the book Le Cordon Bleu Complete Cook Home Collection. To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with their recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Tasting Notes
This was a very easy dish to make and would be great for entertaining since you can prepare it ahead of time. However, I prefer fish with sauce, and there wasn't a sauce with this one. I loved the fennel though. This dish is perfect for Valentine's Day since the shape of the parchment is a heart. Also, since it's enclosed in an envelope, it would be a perfect Oscar Party meal.

Next Class
Blanquette de Lotte aux Petits Légumes (Monkfish in White-Wine Cream Sauce with Vegetables) pages 408-409

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Running total: $1,063.16 + $14.19 (fish) + $6.37 = $1,083.72

($5.14 per serving)

Butter used so far: 9 pounds, 28 tablespoons

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::Whisk Wednesdays::
We're cooking our way through a cooking school curriculum using the Le Cordon Bleu at Home cookbook. The "classes" are based on the Le Cordon Bleu curriculum found online and used as a guideline. Not all the items in the curriculum are in the cookbook, but most are. Where the items are not in the book, we try to find a suitable substitution. Find out more here.

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