Whole-y fish, Batman! Snapper en papillote

If you’re going to be a conscience-ridden omnivore like me, it’s a good idea to occasionally come face-to-face with your food, literally. Hence my trip to my local fishmonger. Yeah, I used that word. I am the wordmonger.

I’ve already done numerous en papillote dishes, but since I’m single, I rarely cook whole fish for myself. And I don’t cook whole fish for my friends because, well, they’d freak out at the fish face staring accusingly (albeit in a vacant-eyed way) at them.

Alton Brown’s recipes are appealing because they’re fairly foolproof and come with nifty, nerdy explanations. His snapper en papillote is so super-freaking easy, you really can’t mess it up, no matter how hard you try.

Case in point: I ALMOST NEVER follow a recipe exactly. I tend to make shit up as I go along, tossing in stuff I like and making do with what I have on hand. This makes me a bad pastry chef. I did pretty well sticking to this recipe though, with a few alterations.

I’ve noted my alterations to his recipe:

1 cup couscous
* 1 (2-pound) whole red snapper, cleaned, head on
2 teaspoons salt, plus pinch for couscous
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 small bunch fresh oregano
1 small bunch fresh parsley
1 whole lemon, thinly sliced
1 cup thinly sliced red onion
2 teaspoons minced garlic
** 1 cup halved grape tomatoes
1 cup drained and quartered artichoke hearts
***1/2 cup white wine
1 tablespoon butter

*I got greedy and was working with a 3.3-lb. fish. You can see that diagonally, it was a tad large for the sheet pan and wouldn’t work with the typical papillote method, so I switched to foil.
** I cut waaaaay extra tomatoes and onion. I had leftover baby carrots and cremini mushrooms, so I tossed them in also.
*** I increased the wine volume because of my larger fish and extra veggies

Isn’t that pretty?

Simple instructions:

- Preheat oven to 425 degrees F
- Salt the uncooked couscous, and then make a moat of it around the fish on each side. Keep the moat in place by bordering with your veggies.
- Pretend the fish had a craving for half of your lemon and red onion and all of the herbs by stuffing it inside the cavity.
- Let the remaining lemon and onion, garlic and butter play King of the Mountain on top of the fish. Then drown them all by pouring the wine.
- Have a few sips of wine since you opened the bottle anyway.
- Close by either folding edges of parchment paper and stapling or if you’re me, covering entire thing with foil and crimping edges to make a tight seal.
- Shove in the oven and forget about it for 30 minutes.

I was so hungry, I forgot to get a picture of the finished product, but you get the idea from this. Besides, once the fish came out, the eyeball had oozed out, which wasn’t as aesthetically pleasing as I’d have liked. Also, the fish is so flaky and tender, it was easily hacked up. Again, not pretty.

There are plenty of bones, but that’s not really a problem for me. I loved the size of this fish because I could actually get the meat from the cheek and head.

Speaking of … here’s a little ditty from Barnes & Barnes. The “song” starts at the 2:18 mark.

If that totally turned you off, you can always make the recipe with fillets and layer the ingredients. But what’s the fun of that?

Tagged as: Alton Brown, Food Network, Recipe, seafood