Fresh caught trout

This week my mighty outdoorsman went fishing.

I was in meetings at work that ran late and therefore missed the succession of excitable text messages that went along with his success. But when I got home (too late to cook), the evidence was clear - two lovely fat rainbow trout, one 4lb, one 5lb, nicely cleaned (all carnage disposed of) and ready for eating.

The larger one was beheaded and de-finned, I put it in a cure in the fridge for another day's eating.

The smaller one was filleted, a bit of salt, a bit of pepper and into the oven. None of our pans were big enough to fry them in and we wanted to avoid eating in relays.

I roasted some new potatoes with olive oil, whole cloves of garlic and some peeled shallots, tucking a couple of fresh bayleaves into the tin.

As a sauce, I chucked another shallot, cut into brunoise, into a cup of white wine in a small pan and reduced it down to about a quarter cup, then added a rough puree of blanched watercress, the juice of half a lemon and mounted it with some nice butter. It was much thicker than a beurre blanc, but on the same principle.

A bit of lemon-dressed green salad, and there we were. Obviously the fillets were way too big for us to finish, so there is a nice pile of flaked baked fish in the freezer waiting to be made into fishcakes. We gave Urchin a bit as well (without the seasonings) but the fussy beast was utterly unimpressed.