triedunture | Recipe: Fish in a Bag (Reply)

Fish. It feeds the brain and makes it run on all cylinders. It's what makes Jeeves' head bulge at the back and move in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. It's also dashed tasty, but how does one that feels a bit inadequate in aquatic cookery prepare such a dish?

This is an easy, breezy lemon squeezy recipe that we used to make at my parents' seafood joint. Even the completely inept can't fuck this up. I dare you to try.

Here's what you need:

1. Fish. Any mild white fish will do. Dolphin (also called mahi-mahi), pompano, grouper (YES, my personal favorite), any of these will do. In this instance, I used flounder.

2. Paper bags. One for each fillet you're cooking. The kind you used to pack brown bag lunches in.

3. Olive oil.

4. Salsa.

I made my own salsa fresh so that those 10,000 pounds of tomatoes wouldn't go to waste. Here it is: just chop and mix 4 or 5 tomatoes, a small white onion, two or three jalapenos (seeded), a clove of garlic, and a dash or five of hot sauce.

Now what you need to do is brush the paper bag lightly with olive oil to keep it from being burnt in the oven. Dump the fish in the bag with a good heaping dose of salsa on top. It'll look like this:

Happy fish!

Now fold the top of the bag tightly. The idea is to create a nice, savory little packet that will let the fish steam while it roasts in the oven. Back in the day, old-school Floridians used to wrap the fish in newspaper; we don't do that anymore, of course, because of the dangers of eating ink, but if you don't have a paper bag, you can improvise with any kind of clean paper wrapped tightly around the whole shebang.

Your happy packet will look like so:

Now stick that sucker in the oven for about 30 minute at 375 degrees F. You'll know it's done when it smells done. When removing the bag from the oven, be careful. All those delectable juices are liable to spill out very easily. If you're serving this to guests, you can be all fancy and deliver the bag on the plate for the guest to open themselves. We used to do this at the restaurant. The trick of opening the bag is to lift it up and give it a gentle jerk above the plate. Then the bag splits open and the oh-my-goodness-gracilicious fish tumbles out:

*Homer drool noise*

It takes almost no effort, and it looks like you were a cooking genius. The fish will be tender, flaky and melt-in-your-mouthy. The salsa will have basted it to make it even more juicy. It's...it's just fucking great food, y'all!