Fish en papillote is such a flavourful and healthy way to eat fish. It’s mainly used to cook those really lean, flaky fishes because it keeps all the humidity that the lean fish would lose by other ways of coccion, like pan frying, simple oven, etc. It’s simply an aromatic vapor that cooks you fish, and when the time come to open those little puffy bags, all that aromatic vapor hits your nose, no better way to start a nice light diner.
For this dish, I’ve used a beautiful small soles. This fish really gain from the papillote humidity, simply add some aromatics of your choice; here, I’ve used a bed of bell pepper slices, then topped with tomatoes, olives, thyme and garlic with a touch of olive oil and white wine. You can also make those papillote with aluminium foil, it’s easier to close up hermetically, but be careful… if you use any acidic ingredients, it reacts badly with the aluminium. I prefer the “parchemin” baking paper, to make papillote, then you see them expanding and the fact that each person at the table open carefully there own bag and get that cloud of aromas… it’s simply precious!
To cook the papillote, the main idea here is to keep you bag hermetically closed up. There is millions of way to fold a papillote, I, personally, just twist twice each corners and sides, than I staple it a few times. Yes a stapler in the kitchen… strange… Also another important element to papillote is to add a little 1 tbsp of liquid of your choice in it before closing up. This way you’ll make sure enough vapor will form inside to cook.
Let’s make that aroma cloud going!
Sole en Papillote
Makes 2 portions
Ins
truments
- Stapler
- 2 large baking paper rectangle
Ingredients
- 2 small soles, cleaned
1/2 bell pepper sliced- 2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tbsp white wine (water or fish stock)
- 1 tomato sliced
- 5 kalamata olives
- 8 thyme branch
- 1 garlic finely sliced
- salt, pepper
Directions
Bring oven to 210°C (410F)
- Clean up the fish, salt and pepper it
- Cut a large rectangle of baking paper
- Add the sliced bell pepper in the middle of each papillote
- Add the fish on top of the pepper
- Add the rest of the ingredients on top of the fish
- Close up the paper by folding each side twice and staple it, then to the same with the corners until hermetically closed up
- Cook the papillote in the oven at 210°C (410F) for 10-15 minutes depending of the thickness of your fish (mine were 1 cm thick and small so 10 minutes was enough)
- Serve as soon as it comes out of the oven
Serve with a side of white bean quinoa salad, rice or whatever you like with fish. Enjoy those little bags of flavour!
