VIDEO: FIRE-KISSED TROUT: SIZZLE AND SMOKE WITH THE AP FLAMBADOU
The Catch: A Rutland Rainbow Trout
Rainbow trout. Rainbow of the lake. Red side….
Bow
Fine fisherman Christoff hauled this beast from a lake somewhere in the Rutland area a few weeks back. He then mercilessly killed it, ripped out its cuts and cut off its head before laying it ever so gently into the bottom of his freezer next to all its kin that he’d previously slew.
One fine recent Wednesday, myself, Chris and our fine fishy friend assembled at the forge to get our cook on.
A Saucy Misadventure
Prior to this I got on with some food prep.
I had some prawn head stock, red wine and various aromatics that I thought might make a nice sauce when combined. How wrong I was.
I’ve made a red wine based sauce for fish before that turned out to be delicious but if memory serves that didn’t involve fish stock. No need to go further than to say it was legitimately one of the worst tasting things I’ve ever made.
So down the sink it went.
Better Prep
With the sauce experiment behind us, we moved on to the main event—the fish.
I sliced up some spring onions, shallots, chilli and ginger and popped them into an old takeaway container. Should have had some garlic but I forgot. We live in an imperfect world.
We boiled some peeled potatoes until tender, let them steam off then got to lighting the barbecue.
As for the fish, some skin scoring, a little oil and lots of flaky salt and a stuffing of half the aromatics was the extent of it.
Once the AP Plancha was nice and pre heated on the Weber, we oiled the taters generously then smashed them down on the flat top using our burger press for MAXIMUM CRUST.
After about 10 mins on each side, they went into a tin and were set aside.
Fish time
The trout got a nice hard sear for a good 5 or 6 minutes on each side.
It’s mentioned briefly in the video but a good way to tell if fish is ready to flip is to just try and pull it off the grill. If it doesn’t come away easily, just leave it for a bit longer and keep the faith. It’ll come away when it’s good and ready.
After about 20-25 mins on the cooler side of the barbecue with the lid on, we ramped up the heat with the flambadou nestled nicely in the coals for maybe 10 mins until red hot.
Finally, we had the genius idea to put the spuds in the base of the weber under the fish to catch all the lovely aromatic fishy butter that was about to cascade on down. Time to get basting.
The Flambadou Finish
With some aromatics on top, generous dollops of Irish butter went into the red hot cone and melted through the hole in the bottom and onto the fish.
In the past, butter has always ignited nicely in the flam but for some reason, we couldn’t get it to ignite.
I reckon Kerrygold have a slightly higher water content than cheaper butter but it still did the job.
It still crisped up the skin and distributed the aromatics across the fish and potatoes waiting below, making a kind of quick and easy sauce.
It really brought the dish together.
As with anything in cooking, if it tastes amazing, who cares?
More than Decent
This vague outline of how to cook with fish is well worth a go if you have something similar knocking about in your freezer.
It defrosted in about 45 minutes just sitting in a basin of cool tap water.
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