Weeknight Cooking

Mix and Match: Foil Packet Fish

Page 262 of my new cookbook, Food Network Magazine's Great Easy Meals, lays out the perfect open-ended  process for any mix and match foil-packet fish recipe.  I've been foiling seafood and chicken breasts for many many years and we almost always love the steamed (but baked) results of this quick, creative cooking style.  The fundamentals are simple: pick a fish, prep your vegetables, make a topping, fill the packets, then let them bake.  In the past, I've centered my fish foil recipes around sliced tomatoes, zucchini, and some kind of green, like basil or tarragon; last night's batch I placed

down in a heap of halved cherry tomatoes, red potatoes, onion chunks, white kernel corn, a couple of cubed lemon portions, and finally

some basil leaves.  Because the salmon, according the recipe page anyway, takes only 12 minutes in a packet, I cooked my tri-angled potatoes for softness beforehand, then set the three-inch slab of seasoned salmon down on an oiled foil square, the tomatoes, a heap of potatoes, the corn kernels, sopped it with olive oil, then sprinkled some basil leaves over it all.  Crinkle up each side of the foil then set it onto a baking sheet at 450....and in 18 minutes take them out, set them on a plate, and when you open up the packets a steam roll of the Pacific Coast comes wafting up.  The salmon is fresh and tender, the veggies soft, and a sort of quick-cooked broth sits down on the bottom of the packet, a nice little self-contained meal that everybody shakes their heads at in approval.