Trout In A Green Dress

By Clare

Dinner party Fish Main Ingredients Mains Meals and courses Recipes Type

“Glory be to God for dappled things –

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings…”

From ‘Pied Beauty’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins

This is an appropriately seasonal recipe for trout wrapped in lettuce. The only problem with it is the bones, so leave out big plates for people to put the heads, tails and bones onto, and serve it somewhere light, where they can see what they are doing.

The taste, though, is very fresh and spring-like.

Recipe for trout in a green dress

for two

¼ cucumber
1 cos lettuce
2 spring onions
2 tablespoons (big handful) parsley
knob of butter to grease baking dish and scatter little knobs on top
2 trout, gutted
120ml/½ cup/1 large wine glass (good slosh) of white wine, cider, or dry vermouth (even rosato)
juice of one lemon

warm plates
grease baking dish – or you can cook individually in foil
heat oven – 180°C
boil kettle of water
peel cucumber and wash vegetables
pour boiling water into a bowl, dip four lettuce leaves in and out and dry
in a processor mix rest of lettuce, spring onions, cucmber, parsley, salt and pepper
pour into baking dish and spread over bottom
season inside of trout, wrap each with two lettuce leaves, place in baking dish on top of sauce
pour over alcohol
add lemon juice
scatter small knobs of butter on top
bake 30 – 45 minutes – longer if in foil, or if the fish are very large
serve with all juices, and some boiled Jersey Royal potatoes