Hello, my name is Ray Hayes. I am the Executive Chef here. You are watching my series on how to prepare Salmon. The next dish we are going to show you is Salmon En Papillote that means in a bag. The first dish we are going to do is Salmon En Papillote. You have already seen we have got the salmon have it prepared over here and as any good cooks know there is a lot of prep that goes on before you get to the actual preparation of the dish.
So what you are going need for this dish is going to be some already pre-washed asparagus, some already precooked and chilled pasta, Roma tomato, salt, pepper, garlic and a piece of parchment paper.
In just a moment, I am going to show you how to cut the paper so we can get started with our En Papillote. When you go to do the En Papillote, you are going to do this like you did in school. You fold your parchment paper in half. Remember how you used to cut little hearts and paper dolls out? So you are going to take the paper and you are just going to cut a big circle, almost down to the other corner and then you are going to flair it out just a little bit.
You do not need this. So after you have done cutting your little paper heart out, this is what we are going to make our salmon in the bag out of. Next we are going to go right to the butter and salmon in the paper. So you are going to take a little whole butter, put it down towards the middle of the paper. This will give you a little moisture in the bag there once you start cooking.
Then we are going to take our pasta here and put that right on top over the butter. Now you are going to put a little salt and pepper on that. Then we are going to take our pre-washed. These are all raw ingredients besides the pasta is cooked, but these are raw here, put a nice, little bed of the asparagus down. We are going to slice a few tomatoes, thin slice is better if you do not want them get too juicy inside the bag.
We are going to take a piece of salmon, put that right on top here, a little more salt and pepper and we are going to lay out these tomatoes right on top. Now that we have got everything built, we are going to show how to close up the bag. So pay attention on how to roll the paper.
So here we go. You got your salmon built on one side of the paper, you are going to pull the paper over, make sure you salmon stays constructed the same height. You started on this side where you left the flair and leave that and go to this side. You are going to fold a little triangle and you take the next piece and fold another triangle and another triangle and another triangle and just keep doing this all the way around the bag until you get to that little flair piece that you had.
Once you get to there, then you just fold it back over and twist it shut. Now if you have finished wrapping it, you can tuck in this little piece here. Again, remember this is going to pop up with all the steam in it. We are going to take a little sheet pan put this on the sheet pan. Go to our oven at 350 degrees, put that right in the middle of the oven.
Now you will know this is done when the paper itself actually pops up and it will turn a little bit of brown on the outside, it does not hurt anything, it is just a parchment on there. But when it pops up like this, you got your salmon.
Now we just heard the timer go off on the over there, that means our En Papillote is done and I am ready to take it out of the oven, see what she looks like. Here we go. We are going to check it out and go right to the plate with it. Do not forget, everything is hot and sharp. Put this on the plate. Then to open this up you can use your forks or knives either one. Just open that up. That smells good.
So now inside this dish here you have your pasta with the butter underneath and salt and pepper, the Asparagus is already cooked, the salmon is cooked, it has a nice tomato flavor on top and if you do not believe me, I will just cut it and show you that it is cooked all the way through there. It is done. The great thing about this dish is you can make five or six ahead of time. You can make them the day before the day off. Throw them in your oven, cook them off, take them out, and the bag, that is your serving vessel right there. So basically, there is very little clean up to do and it really is just a meal in a bag, salmon in a bag.