Thankfully I didn't need to scale and gut my Trout, the fishmonger had done it. Still, he lay there in his beautiful rosy grey scales, staring at me. I really am very squeamish and felt a little ill. I had to cut off his head which I eventually did, with gritted teeth sawing away through gristle and bone until the head was free. Hannah says to mash the heads ( in my case head) but a Trout head is bigger than a Herring's and I think boiling it until soft was perhaps a better option. I plopped the head into a saucepan I had poured a a bottle of Ale in. It was dark sweetish Ale with a mild flavour and soon it was boiling and foaming around the head,I thought it looked rather lovely and very Georgian. I added a small bunch of Thyme and Sage from the garden and some sliced garlic instead of onion,and a bouillon cube and very little water. The smell was heavy and delicious. Hannah says fifteen minutes for the head but I let it simmer for half an hour while I broiled the fish exactly as Hannah says to. In a special fish broiling pan, all I did was coat the fish's body in flour and score it across and then broiled it in fresh butter and pepper.Love the word 'broil' completely sounds like what it is.
When it was done I strained the sauce through a sieve and the result was a beautiful clear brown gravy
two small spoonfuls of mustard -not too much although Hannah says ' a good deal of mustard' if you put too much in it reacts oddly with the beer and becomes bitter. Sieve some flour in and butter
(hen's egg size lump or more if you want) and then whisk it through until it becomes a smooth caramel coloured sauce. I laid the fish in a dish and poured the sauce all over it. It was delicious!!
It did sort of fall apart, so it isn't very photogenic. But it was so good.
We ate it, deboned, on a nest of Linguini, which complemented it very well. I can imagine that this could combine with other dishes beautifully.
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