Fish baked in parchment with Beurre Blanc Sauce

Baking fish in parchment is a quick and easy way to cook it and has the advantage of keeping it deliciously moist and tender. It also makes for a very quick cleanup with no messy oven pans to wash. 

I have tried it with various firm-fleshed white fish and salmon. Here I used a selection of monkfish, swordfish and ray wings that happened to be on quick sale at the supermarket. Never having tried ray wings before I thought they looked interesting. They were tasty and creamy in texture, but I'm not sure I'd buy them again; they had a strong, almost bitter flavour. The monkfish and swordfish were delicious. 

I had some parchment bags in a drawer that have been lying around forever, so I used those to wrap the fish. You can use sheets of parchment folded artfully around the fish, or even tin foil. I fear that my parchment folding would not be brilliant and it would leak. 

I once went to a Japanese cooking demonstration where the Mr Okada, the chef, used a kind of turkey roasting bag, cut into squares and tied around the fish (in that case black cod, with added onions, mushrooms, a kind of mayonnaisey sauce seasoned with dashi and a small piece of chicken thigh, which was totally amazing and which I still crave today - that's a recipe for another day). You could get away without making an extra sauce as the juices from the fish and veggies mix with the white wine in the bag to form a tasty sauce. However, we tend to like quite a lot of sauce on our food, and the beurre blanc adds a luxurious touch and does go really nicely with the boiled new potatoes.

• About 175g fish per person
• about 3 tbsp chopped fresh herbs - (eg parsley, thyme, rosemary, chives)
• clove garlic, crushed
• 2 sundried tomatoes in oil, chopped
• handful of dried mushrooms, soaked in water to reconstitute, then drained and chopped
• 2 tbsp olive oil (substitute some with the oil from the tomatoes)
• 1 large leek, cleaned and julienned
• about 1/2 cup white wine
• salt and pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 200 C.
2. Cut the fish into large chunks, removing bones. (I used the monkfish bones to make a little bit of stock to add to the sauce - put in half a cup or so of water, a sprig of thyme and rosemary and a bayleaf and a few of the chopped leeks, boil it up for a few minutes, strain and reduce).
3. Mix together the herbs,garlic, oil, tomatoes and mushrooms and put in a large bowl. Add the fish and gently stir around to coat it. Season then pour in the white wine and set aside for a few minutes while you prepare some veggies (I just used new potatoes and green beans).
4. Put the fish into a parchment bag (or arrange on squares of parchment large enough to fold up around it. Put the chopped leeks on the top of the fish. Pour over the wine, fold over the parchment to seal. I split it between three bags, but you can put it all in one big bag, or make individual parcels for each diner to open at the table if you prefer.
5. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 - 20 minutes (depending on the thickness of the fish). You can just open the end of the parcel to check if it's done, refolding and giving it an extra few minutes if need be.

For the beurre blanc sauce:

1 shallot, finely chopped

60 ml white wine

60 ml fish stock or water

30 ml white wine vinegar

30 ml lemon juice

100g cubed butter (should really be unsalted, but I only had salted and it was fine)

1. Put all the ingredients apart from the butter into a small heavy based saucepan and boil to reduce to a syrupy liquid. Gradually whisk in cubes of the butter to form an emulsion.