East Meets West: Whole Fish En Papillote
En papillote is french which means to wrap in paper (fancy right?!). Back home, there is a Chinese dish called 纸包鸡 which is paper wrapped baked chicken. The methodology is similar as it uses the principle of creating a vacuum and steam to cook whatever is wrapped inside the hot parcel. Personally, I love using this technique to cook fish because its almost 100% foolproof. Once you get the fundamentals, the rest is easy peasy. You can see the re-cording I did on Kittch here.
Equipment
You’ll also need parchment paper, tin foil and a baking tray large enough for the fish.
Ingredients
2 pounds Whole rainbow trout, Approximately 2#. You can substitute with other fish too.
1 tbsps Sibeiho OMG! Sambal®
1 cups Coconut milk
1 bunch Aromatic herb, We used onions, ginger, spring onions, basil in the cooking demo
1 1⁄2 tbsps Fish Sauce
Preparation
- Heat oven to 380F/ 190C.
- Tear enough foil and parchment paper to wrap up the fish with the seal edges at the top of the fish.
- Layer the parchment paper on the tin foil. Then lay half the onions and aromatics on the paper.
- Coat the fish liberally on both sides with OMG! Sambal® and then place on the bed of onions and aromatics.
- Place the other half of the onions and aromatics on top of the fish. Then fold the sides of the tin foil so that it forms a side. Then drizzle the coconut milk all over the fish.
- Wrap the fish and all the aromatics + coconut milk seam side up. Make sure that there is no openings. Slide that into the hot oven. It will take about 35-45 minutes.
- Be careful when you unwrap the parcel as there will be a lot of steam. Have fun and enjoy!