Benjamin Golub’s blog

Megen cooked up an amazing meal the other day and I wanted to share. Cooking “en papillote” is a technique where you place your food in a folded piece of parchment paper and bake it. The pouch keeps in all of the moisture and steams the food. This results in a very moist and aromatic meal that is exciting to open.  Here is the recipe we followed:

You’ll need:

• 1 1/2 lb of salmon fillets
• 1 fennel bulb
• 3 carrots
• 1/2 lb red potatoes
• 1/2 cup Kalamata olives, sliced
• Thyme (4 teaspoons), garlic (2 gloves minced), lemon juice, and olive oil (3 tablespoons)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 400°F.
2. Thinly slice the fennel, carrots, and potatoes in 1/8 inch thick slices.
3. Blanch each vegetable (separately) in salted water. Fennel for 2 minutes, carrots for 1, potatoes for 2. Put the fennel and carrots in an ice bath and then drain. The potatoes can just be drained (no ice bath needed).
4. Toss the fennel and carrots with olives, lemon juice, thyme, half of the garlic, 2 tablespoons olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste.
5. Toss potatoes with the rest of the garlic and olive oil.
6. Divide the potatoes onto the parchment paper.
   
7. Place the salmon (seasoned with salt and pepper) on top of the potatoes.
8. Top the salmon with the fennel and carrot mixture.
   
9. Gather the parchment paper and fold to form a pouch; it needs to be tight. We forgot to get string to tie it together so we just used another piece of parchment paper on the top tucked underneath the pouch. This worked well for us.
   
10. Place the pouches on a baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes.

Opening the pouch at the dinner table is a lot of fun and it smells amazing:

The end result: