Salmon with blue cheese en papillote

Does blue cheese go with salmon? Like a wink and a smile!

Tuesday is apparently the most depressing day of the week. I suppose it makes sense as the weekend elation has by then worn thin and the week stretches ahead interminably.

Blue Tuesday

On Monday a lot of us are still riding the wave of not doing much at all, surfing the web and telling ourselves there’s not that much to do. On Tuesday the backlog hits us. There are suddenly five double-booked meetings in the diary. The boss is equally miserable but has the upper hand of taking it out on us. The weekend is nowhere in sight.

I cook salmon on Tuesdays quite often.

Why salmon Tuesdays?

I’d like to say that it’s my subconscious dictating the right, good and healthy thing to do. I'd love to believe that the prospect of famously good-for-you, oily fish rich in omega acids for dinner cheers me up during the day.

The truth is far more boring. I'll have bought the fish from my weekly Saturday market. Since I didn't freeze it - if you are going to have frozen fish instead of fresh, buy it frozen - Tuesday is the cut-off day to cook it.

But as said above, salmon is a brilliant diet choice and most people (that's pescatorians and up) like it so there's nothing at all wrong with an idea of a salmon Tuesday to cheer us up.

It is actually quite calorific but still a good choice if we want to repent for the weekend’s debauchery and those extra two pounds that crept up on Monday morning scales.

How to cook salmon fillets

Salmon is easy to cook but just as easy to overcook and end up dry and miserable. I like it still a little transparent in the middle which means not a longer oven séjour than ten minutes for an average fillet.

But the method below is foolproof because cooking fish in a foil parcel prevents it from overcooking.

Salmon en papillote

This recipe works the best with nice and thick fish fillets, cut from the head end of a salmon side. All you need to do is make an incision in the middle of the fillet, lengthwise, and insert chunks or batons of the blue cheese of your choice into the trench.

With a little honey and butter, the blue cheese will run into the beautifullest sauce, keeping the salmon juicy and the making the dinner experience sublime.

En papillote, in a parcel, is also a brilliant method for dinner parties. You can prepare the parcels beforehand, place them in the oven when required and present in still closed parcels on dining plates, for the diners to peek inside, catch an appetising burst of fragrant steam and gasp with delight.