Alton Brown en papillote...

I assume Alton Brown is pretty well-known. On one hand, he irritates me with his excessive gadgetry and obsessive-compulsion, but on the other, I not-so-secretly find him ridiculously attractive, erring on the side of sexy. It's probably the geek/food factor, but I'd definitely have a one- or several-night-stand with him. Just long enough to get one-on-one with him in the kitchen. But the sad truth is I'd be gone pretty quickly. OCD is so not my thing.

Alton, baby, it could have been beautiful, but it would have never worked out regardless of how many batches of lemon curd we licked off each other. I just can't stand the fear of getting dirty in the kitchen.

Anyway, I digress. He has a recipe for fish en papillote, or fish cooked in parchment paper. You can fix the recipe to be single serve with fillets or whatever... you can mess around with it so it becomes the ultimate healthy fast food. Have a piece of fish thawing in the fridge, get home, throw some veggies, salt, pepper, spices, cooking liquid (wine, broth, whatever), and couscous in a piece of parchment paper, bake it, and there's dinner. It's a beautiful thing. And ever so elegant and classy served with a glass of wine.

Danny (my current partner-in-crime) and I have made this using a whole fish (red snapper) before with delicious results. This last time was a riff on a very harmonious theme....

I had some kumquats from Trader Joe's (the best place to buy food in possibly the entire universe). For anyone who doesn't know, kumquats are nifty little orangey things the size of large grapes. The peel is sweet, the interior is an intense blast of sour, and you shove the whole thing in your mouth unpeeled for the ultimate explosion of citrusosity. (Chinese celebrate the New Year by letting kumquats sit in sugar for a week before eating; they signify a sweet new year.)

I love them raw and untainted. Danny doesn't.

So I decided to include them somehow in a salsa of sorts to put on top of some oily fish. I reached this obvious conclusion as I ate lunch one day. I had some tomatoes and basil alongside some stirfry we had made. After I ate, I had a couple kumquats for dessert. Then, I burped. My burp was delicious. It was tomatoey, basilicious, and kumquaty, with a touch of onion. This was my inspiration, I kid you not. A burp.

Wolfgang Puck better watch out...

Anyway, Danny and I went to Whole Paycheck, er... excuse me, Whole Foods for some fish seeing as the fish guy we usually go to closes at 6 PM. The lady told us the perch we purchased was oily and more fishy than not. Perfect. Omega-3 and kumquat bliss.

We went home, washed the fillets, rinsed some whole wheat couscous (another delicious Trader Joe's product), sliced some onion, lemon, garlic, and tomato as per Alton Brown's lovely recipe. We then sliced up the remaining kumquats into thin little rounds. Some went into a salsa bowl with a few chopped tomatoes, basil, onion, and a little pepper, and some we set aside. 3 fish fillets (we had 6) went down, and we put a bunch of lemon slices, onion, garlic, a sprinkle of kumquat slices, salt, and pepper. 3 fillets went on top, followed by more onion, lemon, garlic, kumquats, and pepper. Then we put couscous around the whole thing, threw some tomato chunks, sliced good olives (we didn't have artichokes although they would have totally ROCKED), and more kumquats on the couscous. We put wine over it all (more on the wine later), sealed the paper, and baked it up (425 F for ~30 min.).

We sandwiched the fillets to simulate a whole fish, and it worked really well. Alton tells you to discard the lemon and onion from inside the fish cavity if you do use a whole fish, but when sandwiched between fillets, it gets all cooked and jammy and is really delicious with everything. So we had fish and couscous with my pseudo-salsa which almost blew my head off because it was so tasty. Something about unadulterated citrus and basil full blast in my mouth is totally freakin' sweet.

(Side note: I want to make kumquat basil gelato.)

As it was, the fish wasn't as fishy as I thought. The kumquats were the power flavor, and I would not hesitate to use them with the fishiest of fish, like bluefish or mackerel. If you're not rocking the omega-3's hardcore, when you cook kumquats, they get much, much more mellow and blend in, but raw... be careful. They'll dominate.

So, about the wine for the fish... use a white you'll want to drink. We got a bottle from the Vouvray region. I've completely forgot what the name was, but it was one of those dangerous wines. You know what I'm talking about, wine with low acidity and uber smooth enticing flavor, especially when cold. It's the kind where you always want another sip. You could drink and drink, and never notice a thing until it's too late.

The whole meal was excellent. I think it was healthy, too. I would have maybe added more veggies, but we were low on tomatoes so the salsa couldn't be expanded very much. Ah well, next time, right?