A good mid-week recipe should be easy to prepare and highlight the simple freshness of the fish. And it must be the freshest you can find. When we lived in Hong Kong, I noticed with some amusement that the Chinese would only buy fresh whole fish from the sidewalk stands and if the fish were alive, so much the better. Squeamish Westerners preferred to buy fillets and they ate their fish a day older and a bit less flavorful.

When you buy a whole fish, it’s easy to tell how fresh it is by the clearness of the eyes and the bright redness of the gills. If you go to the Asian markets in San Jose, the tanks are full of swimming bass, talapia and catfish and the iced down displays of whole fish are bright, springy and still sea slimy, and they usually have full tanks of live northern lobster, Dungeness crab, clams, mussels and oysters. Orientals won’t buy fish if it isn’t just hours out of the water.

When you have a very fresh fish, it doesn’t take much in the way of fancy preparation to make a wonderful dinner. Forego heavy sauces and use a light touch and simple ingredients to bring out the best flavor. One very easy way to prepare fillets is to bake them in a pouch of parchment paper. The following is more a technique than a recipe. You can vary the contents of the pouches to use whatever fish the butcher promises you came in that day.

If salmon is your best choice, lay the fillets on a bed of par-boiled new potatoes or thinly sliced fennel, dot with a bit of butter, salt and pepper and some dill and wrap it up and bake.

Sue Kleber

Sauté vegetables, shallot and garlic in a mixture of 1 TB butter and 1 TB olive oil until they are slightly tender. Open parchment and lay one quarter of the vegetable mixture on each piece. Cover the vegetables with 2 fillets to each packet. Lay 2 lemon slices on each fillet and dust with parsley, salt, pepper and paprika. Dot with second TB of butter.

Starting at the top of the parchment heart, fold over 1/2 inch of parchment in a section about 1 inch long. Fold over second one inch section of paper to overlap the first and hold it in place. Continue this way around the heart to the tip and fold under this last inch and hold it in place with a paper clip. Bake purses for 15 minutes. Serve in the paper purses and allow each diner to cut open his packet with scissors. The aroma is part of the fun.

If the freshest fish of the day is thin fillets that can be a problem because it is very difficult to serve the cooked fillets without having them fall apart. Wrapping the fillets around a log of shrimp stuffing solves this problem.

Fillets with Shrimp Stuffing
Serves 4 Preheat oven to 375
8 thin fish fillets
1/2 pound raw peeled and deveined shrimp
1/4 cup minced shallot and 1/4 cup minced celery sautéed
in 1 TB butter until soft
1/3 cup dried bread crumbs
1 TB minced Italian parsley
1/4 tsp kosher salt and ground black pepper
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/4 water or chicken stock
2 TB butter cut into small chunks

Very finely mince the shrimp until they form a paste. Combine the shrimp paste with the shallot and celery, bread crumbs, parsley and seasonings. Mix until smooth and form into 8 logs as wide as the narrow width of the fillets. Lay the fillets out with the smoother, shinier side facing up. Lay a log on the narrow end of each fillet and roll up.

Place the fillets, seam side down into a skillet with a lid and add the wine and the broth. Cover and bake for 15 minutes. Remove the fillets and keep warm. Reduce the pan liquid to about 1/2 cup and remove from the heat. Stir in the chunks of butter which will flavor and thicken the sauce. Pour sauce over the fillet rolls and serve with lemon wedges.