Love Bites: Elevate Your Valentine’s Day

Love is in the air, and Valentine’s Day is just around the corner here at The Kokomo Post. To add a dash of culinary romance to your celebrations, we’re thrilled to launch our brand new series, “Love Bites.” In this series, we meet up with local chefs and bartenders who will share easy yet impressive ways to elevate your Valentine's Day soirées, guaranteed to leave your special someone swooning.

In the first episode, we joined Blake Kinder, owner of Marble the Steakhouse, as he unveiled the secrets behind a sophisticated French delicacy—Chilean Sea Bass En Papillote. Blake, a master of culinary craftsmanship, demonstrates how this versatile dish can be tailored to any budget and personalized with your choice of fish and vegetables.

While En Papillote may sound like a technique reserved for the culinary experts, its preparation is surprisingly simple. Our journey begins with the creation of the accompaniment salad, which included asparagus, corn, tomatoes, and red onion. This is a “measure with your heart” situation, allowing you to customize the salad to your liking. A drizzle of oil, a sprinkle of salt and pepper, and a toss in the mixing bowl bring is all it takes to prepare this salad.

With our salad prepared, we lay it out on a generous piece of parchment paper, creating a bed for the fish to lay on. Next, we season our fish with salt and pepper before nestling it on top the bed of vegetables. To elevate the dish further, we added white wine and chunks of compound butter, infused with cajun seasoning, lemon zest, and dijon mustard. The butter not only flavors the fish but also the vegetables as it melts during the cooking process.

The dish is then topped with thinly sliced lemons before the creation gets folded into a snug parchment pouch. From there, it’s into the oven at 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish.

Once our creation came out of the oven, we garnished it with a sprinkle of green onion. And, voilà! Our Chilean Sea Bass is ready to impress!

Join us on “Love Bites” as we continue to explore easy ways to elevate our Valentine’s Day celebrations, one delectable bite at a time. Click here for the full episode.