On Monday, I made salmon en papillote, which is salmon cooked in a pouch of parchment paper.  Having watched Alton Brown and my cooking instructor’s sous chef create salmon en papillote, I was pretty (over)confident that I create the dish.  I learned the hard way not to be stingy with the parchment paper.  That is another post, though.  To make my dish, I used these ingredients:

1. 6 oz of coho salmon
2. 1/4 of a yellow onion, diced
3. 3 mushrooms sliced
4. 2-3 oz of a semi-dry white wine
5. 1 clove of garlic, smashed but not diced
6. The juice of one half of a lemon
7. 1/8 teaspoon of lemon zest

I put all of the contents into a parchment pouch and baked for twenty minutes in the oven at three fifty.  The result: perfectly cooked salmon, flavorful veggies, and a nice wine/lemon sauce.  I toyed briefly with the idea of mixing in a few tablespoons of butter and a little heavy cream with the wine/lemon sauce, but by the time I had the thought, my wife was chowing down.

Unfortunately, I left the bottle of wine Monday night and found that it just did not taste the same the next morning.  This got me thinking about the wine I use for cooking and how different varietals and styles of wine affect my cooking.

Which makes me wonder: what wines do you use to cook?  How much difference do you think it makes?

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