Cod en Papillote with Asparagus

Well, it happened again. Summer hit, my air-conditonless apartment has become a sauna, and I have thoughts like, "I should turn the oven up to 500 degrees and roast fish!" Every year it's like there's a part of my brain that can't figure out the formula Oven=BAD. But I had to do it! The seasonal recipe seduced me! It's not my fault the seasonal recipe didn't come with seasonal cooking instructions!

There were two big factors in my picking this dish. One, Cod was on sale. I've never had Cod but give me a discount and I'll try anything. Two, asparagus season is almost over. My heart is aching. From the first announcement of "Local Asparagus" it's a staple in our apartment, as we munch and grill and chop and bake it into tarts until it fades from the farmers market completely. I even splurged and bought a bunch from the farmers market, with its delicately feathered tips and deep green color. I waved the asparagus around the kitchen giggling like I had just brought home a pair of Jimmy Choos.

This particular preparation calls for creating parchment paper packets, a style that is known in french as "en papillote," though this steam entrapment method is used in a number of cultures. The NY Times has an interesting article about the whole idea from the 90's. Folding was a bit tricky, which is, I suppose, why some forgo the parchment in favor of foil. (Now that I think about it, if you are lucky enough to have an outdoor grill then the foil parchment might be an excellent way of preparing this in the summer.  I must try that.) If I was doing this for a fancy dinner party, I would need to practice this more, because a perfectly folded packet, ripped open to allow the aromatic steam to roll out in a tantalizing cloud, would be really impressive. As this was a test dinner made for only husband and best friend who forgive me anything, my packets looked a little more like mangled UPS packages held together with paper clips. Trapped steam like a charm though!

Cod en Papillote with Asparagus

Adapted from Bon Appetit

Serves 3

Ingredients:

- 1 bunch of asparagus, ends trimmed

- 2 garlic cloves, minced

- 1 teaspoon of salt

- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

- 1 tablespoon plus 3 teaspoons olive oil

- 1/4 cup lemon juice

- 1 1/2 tablespoons dry white wine

- 1 1/2 teaspoons grated lemon peel

- 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

- 1 1/2 teaspoons chopped thyme

- 3 6 oz cod fillets, pinbones removed

Directions:

Mash garlic and salt to paste in a small bowl. Melt butter with 1 tablespoon of oil in small nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add garlic paste; stir until pale golden, about 1 minute. Stir in lemon juice, wine, peel, and black pepper. Remove from heat.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. (At this point you may want to open your windows more and turn on a fan.) Cut out 4 12-inch squares of parchment paper. Take a square, and drizzle 1 teaspoon of oil on the parchment. Place 1 cod fillet in the center of the parchment. Spoon 2 generous tablespoons of garlic-lemon mixture over fish. sprinkle with about 1/2 teaspoon of thyme. Cover with about 6 or 7 stalks of asparagus, laying diagonally across the parchment square. Wrap two opposite corners in over the fish and asparagus, then fold in the two remaining corners, enclosing completely. Fasten edges together with a metal paper clip or two to seal your packet. Place on a large rimmed baking sheet. Repeat procedure with the other two fillets. If you have any left over asparagus, use remaining parchment square to make it its own packet, spooning over as much lemon-garlic sauce as you like. (Can be prepared up to 6 hours ahead and refrigerated.)

Bake fish until just opaque in center (parchment should turn golden brown), about 12 minutes. Transfer 1 fish packet to each plate. Open packets, being careful not to touch the paper clips, and serve.

It turned out really well, and honestly was not a huge hassle for a weeknight dinner. The neatest part was turning on the oven light, and as it shone through the paper I could see the liquid bubbling in the packets. The cod flaked apart beautifully, and was super moist. Again, this was my first cod, so I've not much to compare it to, but I was a fan. The asparagus-only packet, which was a last minute addition on my part when I realized I had too much, was possibly the biggest hit of all. I would consider making the sauce and cooking just the asparagus that way on the side of some other entree if I was really going for a neat display at a party.

I may get one or two more asparagus dishes in this year, but that season is fading. Happily though, new seasons are coming in. Specifically, berry season. I have containers of little red wonders in my kitchen right now, and who knows what kind of summer treat it might become...

PS- I went to a concert in Central Park this week, The NY City Pops featuring Melody Gardot. My friend Anne who went with me remarked that it was great music to cook to, so I downloaded the album and tried it out with this recipe. She was right.

Salt-Baked Branzino or The Fish was Delish and it Made Quite a Dish

I'm a sucker for a good sale. Look in my closet and I can tell you which BCBG boots were discounted on Amazon, which Calvin Klein heels scanned for $20 less then marked at Bloomingdales, and which Kate Spade purse I purchased out of season for 50% off. Ask my husband who is comfortably resting on the Anthropologie bedspread I scored for half price, it's like a sport for me, and I pride myself in it. While I love getting a sale on things I already like (and have been known to stock up) a good sale can also pull me out of my comfort zone. It will entice me to try something I wasn't sure I would like, because it lessens the risk. That is how I ended up, last weekend, staring a dead fish in the face.

I have a very suburban, landlocked relationship to fish. The fish I've made in the past come in fillet form, perfectly clean, wrapped and ready to go. I've dabbled in sushi grade Tuna and spent one harrowing afternoon trying to hack the skin off a piece of Mahi Mahi, but the bulk of my non-shellfish seafood experience comes in the form of Catfish and Tilapia, nice, easy, and kinda boring. One Whole Foods sale flier later, however, and I decided to tackle whole Branzinos, otherwise known as Mediterranean Sea Bass. Well, I told myself I was going to learn to cook Italian, didn't I?

As part of my research I turned back to the Julia Child DVD I had rented last week, where she did an entire show about fish. Part of this show was to take the camera on location to a french fish market, where a skilled cooking professor demonstrated how to clean a fish in fancy ways. At one point they pulled all the organs out through the gills. On one fish they cut in such a way as to shove its own tail through its mouth (pictured, but I didn't do that.) It was kinda one of the grosser things I had ever seen. Really, all of the fish cleaning looked pretty gross. It was bloody, very bloody, and involved a lot of organ ripping. In shellfish, I am cold blooded about this sort of thing, but in a fish with fins, it was freaking me out. I was relieved to find that most nice fish mongers, including the ones at Whole Foods, will do this for you. Someday I will gather the courage to dissemble my own fish, and I promise to post a disgusting blog about it then. For the moment I just let the fish monger hit on me as he wielded a knife into my fish. Must be the designer boots.

There were a few themes that seemed to repeat as I researched these Euro fish. First, the principals of stuffing them with lemon and herbs. That was an easy idea, and economical as I was roasting a chicken this weekend as well, which involves the same ingredients. The second was the idea of packing it in salt. A lot of salt. Basically making a salt shell around the fish and baking it. I had never heard of this or seen it done, this is not a technique often used in home kitchens of suburbia where I grew up, but it definitely seemed interesting. The principal is to almost build a heat trap around the fish, so it can literally stew in its own juice, along with the lemon and herbs. The principal is not to make a crazy salty fish.

Once the thing is baked, the salt shell is cracked and brushed off the fish, and the skin peels off easily after that. Done right and you should only get mild salt flavoring, which seasons the fish nicely. The best tip I got in making sure this was done right was to cover the belly opening with tin foil, to keep the salt from seeping into the soft flesh. Apparently that can cause a gross amount of salty. Traditionally the entire fish is caked in salt, but the recipe I used called for laying them on parchment paper and only building the shell around the top half. I enjoyed this method, as it wasted less salt and was easier to control where all that salt was going. Has anyone ever tried the full encasing or perhaps made little fish snowmen? Tell me about it in the comments!

Salt-Baked Branzino for Two

Adapted from Gourmet Magazine (RIP)

Ingredients:

-3 Cups Kosher Salt

-4 to 5 Large Egg Whites

-2 1lb whole branzino, cleaned with head and tails intact

-6 fresh parsley sprigs

-4 fresh rosemary sprigs

-2 garlic cloves, halved

-4 lemon slices, halved

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Place salt in a medium bowl and add egg whites one at a time, stirring, until the mixture looks like wet sand (the number will vary)

Rinse fish and pat dry. (Check for any organs your fish monger might have missed. Ick.) Place fish on a parchment-line baking sheet and divide remaining ingredients between the cavities of fish. Cover the cavity with a strip of tinfoil.

Firmly pat half of salt evenly over each fish to cover, leaving only the head and end of the tail exposed.

Bake fish in the middle of oven until salt is just starting to turn golden at edges, 15 to 18 minutes. If your fish is heavier then 1 lb., adjust accordingly, giving it an extra 2 to 5 minutes depending on the size.

Crack salt away from fish and discard. Use brush to get off any stray salt that scatters onto the fish. Peel back skin and carefully lift fish from the bones.

That "carefully lift fish from the bones" part I'm still getting the hang of. Despite what I feel was a rather impressive extricating of the spine and ribs (are they called ribs on a fish?) we still managed to get some tiny thin bones on our tongues, so devour with caution. The actual fish part, though, was delicious! It was very moist and well seasoned by the lemon and herbs which gave it a rustic but complex flavor. I'm not sure I'd ever eaten a sea bass before now, but I am a convert. I demanded and received accolades. I insisted on being toasted for my frugal fish victory. And meanwhile we devoured every edible part of the once whole fish.

Now if I find a coupon for a whole octopus we could really find out what I'm capable of...