We had a lovely Saturday today. It's been miserable all week, but today the sun shone briefly, and we seized the chance to get out and enjoy the day. We headed to Richmond which is this really charming Georgian market town in the North Yorkshire Dales. It has a monthly farmers' market that I fancied going to, and we just generally love spending time in the town - it has a wonderfully friendly, village feel, and has some lovely cafes and restaurants. In fact this time we discovered the converted rail station which now houses some sweet artisan foodie shops - a bakery, micro-brewery, cheese maker, fudge shop and the most wonderful icecream shop. I swear - hand on heart - I've never in my life eaten ice-cream as delicious as that! I had the black cherry and I never wanted the icecream to end! So good. I think visiting that wee icecream parlour will be a regular thing for us. Anyway, I digress. The market, too, is usually pretty good (a lot of towns have jumped on the whole 'farmers' market bandwagon' and many - if not most, in my opinion - should jump right back off. This one is good though). Today I fancied some fish and there's a (usually) great fishmonger there. We got some smoked salmon and they also had whole fresh rainbow trout that looked fresh and sweet. I got two - one for each of us at dinner. I figured they'd need about 10 mins in the oven, stuffed with lemon thyme and some salt and pepper - yum, right? Just as the potatoes I'd sauteed with garlic were cooked to golden perfection, I took the fishies out of their wrapping and got ready to stuff...only to find, quelle horreur, that they weren't GUTTED! Am I wrong to be horrified by this? I'm not sqeamish with food - I can rip up a chicken carcass with the best of them - but frankly if I had wanted to play with squishy fish guts, I would have bloody well gone fishing myself! I assumed - perhaps foolishly - that the fishmonger would have gutted the trout for me...or at the very least would have told me they were still en-entrail so that I could have gotten him to remove them! Every other time I've bought whole fish, it's been cleaned and ready for cooking. Anyway, I bravely overcame my terror and filleted the fishies with their guts still entact (4 of the ugliest fillets you've ever seen, let me tell you) and once grilled and served with herb butter, they were delicious, but I still feel a little shaky after the filleting experience (it's not easy to fillet a fish while trying to avoid the innards....you try it sometime, if you don't believe me...ugh....)
So, was it a foolish assumption on my part, or was the fishmonger just a mean son-of-a-bitch with a sick sense of humour?!
Definitely unexpected and unnecessary - cheap and lazy fishmonger would be my interpretation.
ReplyDeleteDon't suppose you have any great ideas for using up stale bread?
Hmm...well, obviously breadcrumbs (although I use those mostly for coating meats...but you could flour/egg/crumb mushrooms and fry - serve with a little garlic mayo?).
ReplyDeleteFrench toast (which, I've discovered, is also delish as a dessert, not just breakfast...serve with a little fruit compote and cream - yum!).
Bread and butter pudding or queen pudding? Stuffing for baked mushrooms/tomatoes/courgettes?
Actually if you have stale whole loaf, cut into a thick slice and then cut a pocket into it, stuff with a couple of tinned peach slices, then soak in beaten egg (a la french toast), fry in butter and serve with maple syrup. Very very good!