Hey Fishie Fishie

A year or so ago (gosh, could it really be closer to two years ago? Man time flies) I had a traumatising experience with some fresh trout from a less-than-impressive fishmonger (I'd include the link to the previous blog posting, but for the life of me I can't work out how to do that on these damn blogs). Such was the trauma of said fishie incident that I haven't considered the idea of whole fish since...until today (dum dum dum).

I was ordering the groceries online yesterday and none of the salmon options appealed so I thought I'd be brave and order some fresh whole trout. The website assured me that the fishies were gutted, scaled and otherwise cleaned (phew), so I did it. And you know what? What a bloody revelation. So lovely and fresh, incredibly cheap (really - under half the price of two scrawny white fish fillets and much less than the price of two salmon fillets) and actually very simple to prepare. All I did was pop some chopped garlic, sliced lemons and a bunch of random herbs (rosemary, lemon thyme, parsley) and some salt inside, then rubbed the outside with olive oil, salt and some chopped herbs. Threw them in a hot oven and 15 minutes later, hey fishie fishie. Yum! With the fishes we had new potatoes, roasted cherry tomatoes and green beans. All in all, pretty damn tasty.

Fishies before their firing

I will say, though, that the fishies were quite bony and I did manage to get one of the tiny wee bones lodged in my throat (of course). I'd read somewhere that a quick swig of vinegar is an old Chinese remedy for swallowing fish bones and, rather impressively, it does actually work. Burns like bejesus going down and gives you the sensation of having recently thrown up (you know that acid burn feeling?) but it does seem to dissolve the fish bone.