They were selling Danish sea trout on the market last Friday. I very much doubt that the variety I bought were wild sea trout. The real things are enormous beasts. The ones sold on the Friday market, I suspect, are farmed. Let’s face it most commercially available fish these days is. Unless you’re living along the coast of Denmark I suspect the only other people lucky enough to eat wild sea trout are Russian oligarchs helicoptered into Denmark for a week-end of fishing on their private yachts. For the rest of us mere mortals we shall make do with the farmed variety. We can only hope that with all the bad press farmed fishing has been receiving lately that the owners of these outfits are making every effort to produce quality fish. The ones I made this week-end tasted fresh and tender and were wolfed down by the children (well, R. aged 10 refused to eat his but the other three did.)
Ingredients
Danish Sea Trout (or any fresh water trout)
1-2 shallot (or any onion you have to hand)
Ginger
Dill
Tarragon
Butter
Salt & Pepper
Directions
Ask the fish-monger to gut the fish. Wash them thoroughly and pat them dry with a kitchen towel and put to one side in the fridge.
Dice the shallot ( I only had a red onion and it works just as well) into small pieces and fry on a medium heat in a frying pan with a knob of butter. When the onions have turned translucent remove them from the heat and leave them to cool.
In the meantime chop the ginger with the dill and tarragon into small pieces.
Mix the ginger, dill and tarragon with the fried onions.
Remove the fish from the fridge and spoon the onion, herb and ginger mixture into the cavity of the trout. Add a knob of butter and place them in an oven dish.
Sprinkle with a dash of olive oil, some salt & pepper and place some fresh dill and tarragon on top. Cover with silver foil and leave to bake in a pre-heated oven for approx. 30 mins.
Serve with a sour cream and chive cucumber salad, sauce tartar and with either tabouleh or salt potatoes.
You refer to ‘charlottes’ here (and I seem to remember in a precious recipe. I think there is a potato variety named charlotte, but you would hardly replace potato with an onion, surely. The flavours would be quite different. So what is a charlotte?
This sounds like an interesting way of cooking fish, though I would not a whole trout – I dont like food on my plate looking at me!
Good point! Should read shallot not charlotte. Will edit.
As for the fish head – you can always ask the fish monger to cut the head of when gutting the fish, though you’ll be missing out on mush of the flavour and nutrition if you discard the head. Napoleon would only ever eat trout cheeks since they are widely considered the most tender and tastiest morsel of the entire fish. It is also where some of the most nutritious part of the fish resides.