Granddad Ken’s (not my granddad) crispy grilled trout with parsley and lemon

From Cook with Jamie
Serves 2

ingredients

2 x 300g/10½oz whole trout, scaled, cleaned and gutted
olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
a large bunch of fresh flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked and chopped
2 lemons, 1 zested and sliced, 1 halved
a few knobs of butter

Preheat your grill to full whack. Slash each trout with a knife, about ten times on each side. Each slash should be about 0.5cm/¼ inch deep. Rub the trout with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Stuff the cavities with plenty of chopped parsley and the lemon slices. Place the fish side by side on a baking rack over a roasting tray.

Put the lemon zest on top of the fish and place the lemon halves on the tray too. Dot the trout with the butter and place it 15cm/6 inches from the grill. Cook for around 6 minutes on each side until crispy and golden.

Squeeze the roasted lemon over the top of the fish and serve with a simple crunchy side salad.

Something simple and healthy for Sunday lunch. As you can see from the picture, I did not use parsley for the fish. Instead, I used up the leftover dill and rosemary in my fridge. Be careful with the lemon, if you are not into sour foods, might be a good idea to show some restraint in the squeezing of the roasted lemon.

Sole (Trout) A La Basquaise

From Ginette Mathiot – I know how to cook
Ingredients

3 Dover or lemon sole, cleaned and skinned (I used a whole rainbow trout instead)
100ml white wine
1 tbsp chopped chives
2 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley
1 shallow
100g mushrooms, chopped
50g butter
200ml any stock
salt and pepper
juice of 1 lemon

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Cut along the centre of the sole to remove and discard the central bones, and put the fish into an ovenproof dish. Pour in the wine and bake for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, mix together the chives, parsley, shallot, mushrooms and butter in a bowl to make the stuffing. Remove the fish from the oven and fill the cavities left by removing the bones with the stuffing, pour in the stock and season with salt and pepper. Reduce the oven temperature to 160 degrees, return the dish to the oven and bake for a further 10 minutes. Serve sprinkled with the lemon juice.

Instead of using 3 whole lemon sole, I swapped it with a whole rainbow trout. The recipe works well for this fish although I think you can reduce the amounts for the stuffing as the cavity for the trout is smaller. Alternatively, you can add the rest of the stuffing to the stock. In a way I prefer using the trout as it doesn’t require the removing of the bones for the sole. The total baking time for trout is 25 minutes at 200 degrees

Oven baked salmon fillets with a parsley cream sauce

Ingredients
Serves 1-2

2 salmon fillets

1 shallot, finely chopped
4 tbsp fish stock
5 tbsp single cream
1 tbsp fresh parsley, finely chopped
1/2 tbsp butter

Preheat oven to 250 degrees

Place salmon fillets on an oiled baking tray. Season with salt and pepper and bake in the oven for 8 -10 minutes.

Meanwhile, melt the butter at medium heat and add the shallots. Cook until softened. Add the fish stock. Bring to the boil and continue boiling till reduced by half. Add the cream and chopped parsley. Continue boiling until reduced by half or to the desired consistency.

Place the salmon on a plate and spoon the parsley cream sauce over the fish.

This is a basic cream sauce that I have been using all my life (at least from the time I started cooking) for my fish dishes when I am too lazy to cook anything too complicated. It’s based on a French cream sauce but I modified it over the years. The trick for this sauce is: don’t add too much cream because you don’t want it to be watery. Just add a small amount for starts, and if you think it’s too thick, add a bit more. It’s a pain trying to reduce it when you’ve added too much cream. You can use fresh dill or sorrel as well with this sauce recipe; or any herbs that goes with your fish.