La musique en papillote (F&M III)

Last night, I cooked cod en papillote for a small dinner party. En papillote basically means "in parchment paper"; it's a method of cooking where you seal your food in a little paper pouch and bake it in the oven. It's particularly useful for cooking seafood; the fish steams in its juices, emerging from the oven tender and delicious. I first learned about cooking this way from reading Julia Child but had never tried it myself until last night.

My plan was to make halibut or sea bass, but when I went to the store yesterday morning, there were no fillets of either. I decided on wild black cod instead, which looked delicious. I had done a lot of reading during the week about options for cooking fish en papillote, and bought some clams to incorporate as well.

Since I wasn't exactly using a recipe, I was a little nervous about the meal, and decided to do a quick trial run when I got home that afternoon. I made an Asian-themed sauce, with sake, soy sauce, and green onion. I cut out a circle of parchment paper, placed a piece of fish in the center, covered it in sauce, adding some sauteed shiitake mushrooms and a few clams, and sealed the pouch by folding all of the edges under. Into the oven for 12 minutes at 400 degrees.

The fish was delicious! There was just enough butter from the sauteed mushrooms to sweeten the sauce a little and the green onions gave it a nice kick. The best part was that I could make all of the little paper packages that afternoon and pop them into the fridge. When our friends came for dinner, there would be nothing left to prepare.

The corresponding music? En papillote may not be an exclusively French method of cooking, but I certainly think of French cooking first when I imagine food in little paper packages. So my mind is drawn to French music, and to works which, like fish en papillote, don't reveal their entire meaning to you at once. Just as you have to unwrap your package of fish to find out what's inside, you have to play to the end of each of Debussy's piano preludes to find out its title. (Many modern editions put the title at the start, but the composer specifically wanted the title to follow each prelude.) Cod en papillote and Debussy's preludes are both elegant and whimsical, engineered specifically to spark your imagination.