Salmon en Papillote

Intro

It's another "The Daring Kitchen" challenge. This time it is super healthy cooking style - en papillote. Almost anything, tightly wrapped in a parchment paper, cooks in an oven, steaming in its own juices or with added liquid (often it's a splash of wine). Result is highly flavorful and tasty dish with added fun of unwraping the pack right at the table - well, it's not always the case, often contains of a package served fancy style, on a beautiful plate, but I love the "unwrapping" part and would not rub my guests off this playful part of a meal :)
Fish, especially salmon, is a perfect candidate for cooking "en papillote". That is why it was my choice number one (ha! I'm pesco-ovo-lacto-vegetarian too!).  As I adore any type of pasta, so I went ahead and added pasta to it. Next thing is vegetables, of course. I julienned them to get it cooked fast, "in-line" with a salmon which cooks fast. Seasonings of a choice and few drops of wine and butter - that's it! Easy, healthy, delicious - just the way I like!
As my men still eat meat, I've put together Chicken en Papillote.. and Mushroom en Papillote to use the red wine and corn penne pasta I wanted to try out too.

Notes along the way

- As cool and fun as this cooking style is, it is not feasible, unfortunately, to serve it to my usual guests just because I have too many of them! Can you imagine to fit 12 en papillote packs in a oven at the same time?

- One note about using red wine for en papillote pasta dishes - it stains the pasta and spoils the prettiness of it, so it's better to use white wine .. or red pasta when using red wine!

- Also, it seems that, for en papillote style, using dry herbs in place of fresh ones is the better option. Fresh herbs does not have nice look coming out of oven - at least that's the case for me, I'll be using dry herbs next time (although I prefer fresh herbs almost always).

Salmon en Papillote

To serve 4:

1 lb fresh salmon filet cut in strips
4 servings of rice noodles (or wheat noodles)
1 fennel bulb, julienned
1 small yellow squash, julienned
1 small zucchini, julienned
1 carrot, julienned
zest from 1 lemon
9 red peppercorns (optional)
parsley (fresh or dry)
16 tbs white wine
Salt and pepper to taste
olive oil
4 small pieces of butter
Parchment paper for packing

- Cook noodles according package direction. When cooked and drained, add some olive oil and stir to have nice and loose  noodles. Set aside.

- Cut 4 squares of parchment paper, approximately 12"x12" (depending on a width of your parchment paper roll). Fold each square diagonally and cut heart shaped pieces out of it (see my photos below).

- Lightly toss together vegetables with about one tablespoon of olive oil, salt, pepper and parsley. Set aside.

- Start assembling the packages: on a one half of heart-shaped paper, close to a middle line, place noodles, top it with vegetables. Place salmon pieces, salted and peppered on a top of it.

- Cover loaded half of "heart" with another half and begin to fold edges, starting from the "top of heart" - please refer to my pictures, they tell it all :)  Close to the lower end of heart, create some kind of funnel (hole) and pour about 4 tablespoons of white wine right from the bottle into the package (lift package away from yourself to make wine fill the farthest corners of a "heart". Finish folding twisting the end and securing it with a paper clip or whatever you think can be used there.

- Place all packages on a baking sheet and bake in a preheated oven (about 300F) for about 15-20 minutes depending on thickness of your salmon pieces.

- Take baking sheet out and distribute packages to your people. Tear the pack in a middle and enjoy! Be careful when getting your nose too close to the steaming hole when inhaling all that wonderful aroma!

Pouring wine into opening in a package.

Great return .. from the oven!

Carefully, it's steaming hot!

Do you see those wonderful juices?

Mushroom or Chicken En Papillote

1 lb chicken breast or portabella mushrooms, cut in strips
4 servings of corn penne pasta (or wheat noodles)
1 red pepper, sliced in sticks
1 small zucchini, sliced in sticks
1 carrot, sliced in sticks
16 tbs white wine ( I actually used red wine which stained (bad boy) my pasta!)
Salt and pepper to taste
4 bay leaves
olive oil
4 small pieces of butter or ghee
Parchment paper for packing

- Please, please.. I believe in you - see directions above, it is basically the same! :))))) And here are pictures: 

Chicken en papillote for carnivores is ready to be packed and go to the oven.

And here is mushroom en papillote (ghee is on a top) for us, soft and fluffy vegetarians (can you feel my sarcasm? :))

Packed "baggy" style

My carnivores said it was very delicious. Just to make it ideal add enough white wine (not red wine which make pasta bad-looking boys, stained with red).

Mushroom En Papillote - lovely! Zero-guilt tasty dish - what else to wish for?

Blog-checking lines: Our July 2012 Daring Cooks’ host was Sarah from All Our Fingers in the Pie! Sarah challenges us to learn a new cooking technique called “Cooking En Papillote” which is French and translates to “cooking in parchment”.