Saturday, July 14, 2012

Cooking "En Papillote"

We had a look at the suggested recipes and decided we could do two and make up a pretty good meal. Asparagus to start, Scallops to finish. Even for two recipes, not much of a shopping list, and although our preferred Scallop place is not our preferred everything else place we just went for one stop shopping - also it was too crazy hot for leaving groceries in the car while making other stops.

We didn't have, and continue to forget to purchase, some butchers' twine so we used the traditional wrapping method for each recipe - didn't realize it was an arts & crafts project when we made this decision...

Slow Roasted Asparagus

Is it bad that it took us longer to cut the paper into the recommended heart shape than it did to trim the asparagus, chop the mushrooms and pile everything up? Possibly the easiest recipe to follow, ever? If we had have needed a pot the recipe would have just said 'everybody in the pot'...

The wrapping bit progressed as advertised, but we did draw on a bit of knowledge from seeing various TV chefs doing this. Pretty sure we would have succeeded anyway because it was so simple.

Into the oven for a bit longer than we would have liked (and knew in advance because our print of the recipe was with a bit lacking due to a depleted black cartridge), and back to the TV. We did come back a bit early so we could start the next course and hopefully have that one coming out of the oven about the same time we finished eating this one.

Result

Tasty, perhaps a little salty from the Prosciutto, but not unpleasant too salty. Asparagus cooked up just right. Perhaps we needed a bit more tarragon or even a small squeeze of lime from the next dish once out of the oven, but all was consumed as is. Some nice juices collected in the bottom, but not really sure what to do with them as we didn't bring any sopping materials.

Tarragon Lime Bay Scallops over Angel Hair Pasta

We didn't do much pre-reading of this recipe because the printing was even worse than the first, but good enough to get the ingredients. So we almost missed the bit about pre-cooking the pasta and totally missed the bit about sauteing the scallops until we had a nice (red) reprint of the recipe.

Once everything is cooked, into the paper and wrap using the previously successful method (including the arts & crafts project of cutting the hearts).

Result

Tasty. But... we don't understand the purpose of the parchment and back into the oven. Yes it finished the last bit of cooking of the pasta and scallops, but by this time everything has spent time together getting tossed around in a bowl. A little more cooking before joining in the bowl would have given the same result, perhaps?

Recipes & Destructions Instructions

CLICK

Conclusion

Grabbed up a bottle of bubbles we had tucked away and it had a nice acidity we thought worked out with both dishes. Actually, we would have been happy had the bottle been twice as big and we could continue after the food part of the meal was done - oh well...

We did have a nice dinner, and it was easy to put together and easy to eat so we're pretty sure we got the results we should have so that's a good thing. Ultimately, nothing complicated here but nothing Eureka about it either so we probably won't do it again unless we are given a recipe that is screaming "make me, even though I'm a parcel".

Stay JOLLY!
D&S

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”.