Forget Paper Or Plastic...

...we're using foil bags here. This is the first food post of 2015 and the first time we used any of the fish we brought back from Canada! We decided to try something a little different than the pan-fried prep we usually have up north for something a little fresher. Cooking in bags is a common enough thing - and so useful that there's a whole Good Eats episode about it (S7E8, for those of you wondering). This is based on a Jamie Oliver recipe and can be found here.

The Recipe

Fish in a Bag

1 Bulb Fennel

1 Lemon

8 Cherry Tomatoes

2 Fish Fillets

Olive Oil

Sea Salt

Black Pepper

White Wine

Make a bag out of foil (or buy them, as I think they sell premade bags now...) and place it on a baking sheet. Prep your fennel by cutting off the stems, but reserving the fronds, and then trim the bulb and slice it. Then thinly slice your lemon and cut the cherry tomatoes in half. Place these all in a bowl with the fish, a bit of olive oil, and sea salt and pepper. Gently combine everything with your hands and then place in the bag. Top with fronds from the fennel, add a few splashes of white wine (I used a Pinot, but use whatever you have on hand), seal the bag up, and stick it in an oven preheated to 400 for 20 minutes. Once it's done, take it out and move the contents to a bowl to serve. There will be a delicious sauce from the wine and lemons and tomatoes, so be sure not to waste that.

The Results

This is another very easy, yummy dish to make that seems really impressive, even though it's really easy. The smell of it cooking is wonderful and the finished product, besides tasting great, looks really nice. It's also an easy one to make a day or two ahead of time and then just preheat the oven, splash in the wine (wait to do this step until you're ready to cook), and you've got dinner in 20 minutes. I did exclude the potatoes and olives from the original recipe, but you could always add those back in if you wanted (I just didn't have any potatoes and don't like olives). But overall, this was a very good dish and was very easy. Definitely a good way to use some of our Canadian goodies.