Looking through my mum’s collection of recipes I came across a little leaflet about cooking trout. Trout – salmo trutta, the brown trout, is the most delicious of fish – much better than rainbow trout – oncorhynchus mykiss. My dad was a great fisherman, and I remember going up to stay with friends in Scotland with dad. He’d visited them many times before, but this was my first time. He used to fish in a little stream running along the back of their cottage in Dumfriesshire, but while I was there we were too busy doing other things. However, on the day we were due to leave he got up at about five to try and catch me a brown trout for breakfast. I was very excited at the thought of the freshest of fish to start my day, sadly the only one he caught was the size of a sardine, so he put it back to swim free.
My mum’s little leaflet was no doubt saved by her to actually use as they both loved fish. Angler’s Treat is a tomato stuffed with the smoked fish, tomato flesh, horseradish and hard-boiled egg yolks… I’m not sure how much of the trout you would taste, nor the egg yolks!
There was another recipe for Dated Trout, which sounded intersting, until I reread it and no dates at all – Oated trout – coated in rolled oats and cooked in butter! Here is the third recipe:
Hereford sparklers
- 4 medium brown trout, heads removed and filleted
- 4 oz sweetcorn
- 2 oz breadcrumbs
- mixed herbs, salt and pepper
- 1 tomato, skinned and chopped
- 6 tbsp sparkling Hereford cider
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- mix the sweetcorn, breadcrumbs, herbs, tomato, salt and pepper, lemon juice
- lay out each fillet and put equal amounts of stuffing mix on each, roll the ends over and lay in a shallow ovenproof dish
- pour in the sparkling cider, cover with buttered greaseproof paper
- bake about 20 mins, gas mark 5, 375º F, 190º C until cooked
I think this would be nice with crusty bread and salad – and a glass of Hereford cider if you like cider – I would have beer!
No pictures of trout or Hereford, but some nice water where a trout may be!
