Accidentally discovered a better way to bake whole (scaled and gutted) trout today:
Preheat large oven to 50C. Oil the inside of a piece of file big enough to wrap the fish. Put some flavoured butter and perhaps herbs into the fish’s cavity. Wrap the fish up in the foil and bake until the internal temperature reaches 45C (about 30 mins, check after 20 to see how it’s getting on). Quickly remove bones and serve on warmed plates, immediately as the fish loses heat fast!
This is based on a chicken and coconut soup recipe in Rick Stein’s Far Eastern Odyssey. It tasted very good. The only small problem was a lack of heat (I used 2 bird’s eye chillies without seeds) so I chopped up a red bird’s eye chilli to sprinkle over after serving. That made it a bit too hot so next time I will serve red chillies in vinegar as a pickle like they do in Thailand.
Ingredients
75g shallots, chopped
40g garlic, minced
1 fat lemongrass stalks minced
40g galangal/ginger, minced
400ml coconut milk
500 ml chicken stock
1 star anise
400g king prawns
80g bag of edamame beans
4 kaffir lime leaves
2 – 3 bird’s eye chillies, seeds removed
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp lime juice
30g unsalted peanuts, roasted and ground
coriander leaves
Method
Fry shallots and when soft, add the garlic, ginger and lemongrass to fry them off. Add stock, star anise, lime juice, kaffir lime leaves and ground peanuts. Simmer for around 10 mins, then add lime juice and fish sauce. Add prawns and edamame just before serving so they don’t get overcooked. Sprinkle fresh chopped coriander over the curry. Serve with rice and something leafy and green e.g. pea shoots, spinach, shredded lettuce etc.
21 Mar 2013
I had some leftover sauce so I seared some tiny scallops from M&S to serve with the sauce. It wasn’t nearly as good as with prawns; the scallops were overcooked and relatively flavourless. Later I realised I should have deglazed the searing pan with water to pour into the curry sauce as there was lots of Maillard brownness in there but it still wouldn’t have been that good. I served a chopped deseeded red chilli in rice wine vinegar as a pickle and that was just perfect heatwise.
This was inspired by Nigel Slater’s smoked haddock with potato and bacon recipe. This is what I did with the ingredients I had to hand:
Cut white potatoes into round half-cm thick chunks, boil and leave to cool. Once the steam has gone cover to avoid darkening by oxidation. When ready to eat, saute to brown both sides. These are best served immediately for maximum crunch (like everything involving frying!)
Skin smoked haddock and cut into into large chunks. Poach very gently in water until their internal temperature is 45C.
Make a ham and cream sauce: fry a litle minced garlic just to get rid of its harshness, then add cream, shredded ham and lots of chopped parsley.
Serve with lightly cooked veg.