D: En Papillote
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”.
This was kind of a last-minute challenge for us this month; one or both of us have been away from home for decent portions of the last month! So a couple of nights ago we decided to throw this together:
“But that just looks like pasta!” you say.
“I know!” I respond. “But it didn’t look like pasta… in THIS!”
Yea, so the basic premise of this dish is that you cook the pasta halfway, and then you throw it in parchment paper and tie it up and bake it. The difference here is relatively subtle, but the parchment keeps all of the flavored steam inside, and infuses some of that into the food. I especially noticed it in the pasta.
Spicy Shrimp over Angel Hair Pasta
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 15 min
Ingredients
Directions
- Cook pasta in a 6- to 8-quart (6 to 8 litre) pot of boiling water until al dente (about 3 minutes). Drain pasta in a colander.
- While pasta is cooking, pat shrimp dry and season with salt and pepper. Heat olive oil in a skillet over moderately high heat and sauté the shrimp and peppers until the shrimp starts to color, about three minutes
- Toss pasta in a bowl with half of the shrimp and peppers. Place pasta on parchment paper. Top pasta with remaining shrimp and peppers.
- Tie the parchment like a sack and roast at 375F for 10 minutes. Serve immediately with grated cheese.
My only problem with this dish is that I didn’t have any twine to tie off the parchment paper with. So I ended up just wrapping it up in some extra, twisting it up tight, and hoping for the best. And it worked pretty well! As it cooked, the parchment paper became stiffer and held its shape better than before I put it in the oven.
And for all y’all who complain about how complicated all of the meals are that we blog about, definitely put this one into your pocket. It’s an incredibly easy dish to make, and it looks really fancy. Plus, it tastes really good!
I should really invest in some twine, though.
Oooh that looks yummy! It also seems quite appropriate that the top of your blog background looks like parchment paper :)
True that. I hadn’t noticed the connection before.