go fish

It's been a little while since we've had fish and today was a good day to grill up a succulent rainbow trout. Rainbow trout has a salmon-like pink flesh, which comes from their diet of freshwater shrimp and crawdads. It is an earthy-flavoured fish with a tender, but not quite flaky flesh, making it ideal to stand up to the intense heat of the grill. Therefore, we kept it whole and Dina got to work on the marinade.

First, she cut three deep (about 1/2 inch) slits into both sides of the fish. Into the slits, and into the cavity of the fish, she stuffed some fennel fronds (the leafy ends of a fennel bulb). Stuffing fennel fronds into the slits is a Jamie Oliver trick, who says that it will keep the fish moist and tender. She then combined minced garlic, lemon juice, soy sauce, sesame oil, and oyster sauce and gave the trout the rubdown. The trout then sat for about 20 minutes to soak in all the flavours.

Then, onto the preheated grill (medium-high heat) it went. I made the mistake of not oiling up the grill to prevent the skin from sticking, but I managed to save most of the skin. Before throwing the fish on the hot grill, make sure to pour some olive oil on a towel and rub it across the grates (do as I say, not as I do). About 5-6 minutes on each side was all it took to result in a tender, moist fish, full of flavour, with a crispy skin. You wouldn't believe how much fennel flavour came through simply from using the fennel fronds. Fennel and fish is a great combination.

On the side, we had sautéed purple-headed broccoli (from our CSA basket), simply flavoured with lemon juice, salt & pepper and steamed in a bit of water.

A quick, yet elegant, weekday meal.