It’s been an incredible year (and one where this blog, I’m afraid, has felt rather neglected at times!). Here’s wishing all my lovely readers a very Merry Christmas – may your day be full of peace, joy, and laughter, good food and good company, and home-made goodies of course!
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We made it, WE MADE IT! First of all, a huge thank-you to those of you who’ve followed me through this little blogging adventure, for your kind comments, ‘likes’, and contributions. We did it! 24 days of daily blogs for Advent. Well, it’s Christmas tomorrow, NORAD is tracking Santa towards us as I type (best get to bed before he gets here!), the Boxing Day ham is boiled and glazed, the gifts are wrapped, and the giblet stock is made.
Giblets are so often overlooked. The grotty little plastic bag that accompanies any ‘special’ roasting bird (sadly now completely absent from generic supermarket chickens) and which, I fear, most people will be throwing away some time tomorrow morning. Offal is so horribly out of fashion that an awful lot of people – certainly those who aren’t of the older generation – have no idea where to start.
Last year, on Christmas morning, while I was waiting for my guests to wake up, I blogged my ‘how to’ for giblet stock. I didn’t have any photos at the time, so here it is again, in the hope it’ll be useful to some of you, re-edited and with some new photographs to help you along!
If you’ve bought a bird for roasting today, there’s a good chance it’s come with a little plastic packet of ‘bits’. Whatever you do, don’t throw them away!
These bits are the giblets – the offal – from top-left, clockwise – the neck (in one or two pieces), the gizzard, the liver, and the heart. The gizzard is a thick, muscular structure with two hard abrasive grinding plates that the bird uses to crush up corn and other food items to make them digestible.
Giblet stock is quick, simple, and makes the most wonderful Christmas gravy.
I have a goose this year, but the following applies just as well if you have a chicken or turkey. Personally, I use the goose heart and liver in one of my stuffings, so only the neck and gizzard are available for the stock. But if you’re not going to use the heart and liver this way, just chop them roughly and add them to the stock-pot with the rest of your giblet meat.
In addition to the giblets, you need the following:
Prepare your gizzard by cutting away and discarding the hard plates (use a small sharp knife inserted below and parallel to the plates). It can be a bit tricky to get your knife through the outer membrane, but once it’s in, as long as it’s sharp enough, you can just run it behind the plate. Discard the hard plate material, along with any grotty-looking offcuts. Then, simply chop the rest of the meat roughly into cubes.
Add a splash of olive oil to a nice big saucepan, and brown the neck and gizzard meat, and then add the roughly chopped onion and carrots and sautee for a couple of minutes. Now add about a litre of water (and the splash of white wine if you want) and the bouquet garni, bring to the boil and simmer for about an hour.
Once you’re happy with your stock, strain it, discarding the solids, and return the stock to the pot and boil again until reduced in volume by half. That’s it. Set aside in the refrigerator until you make your gravy (the stock will easily keep overnight – so make it on Christmas Eve if you have time). You won’t regret it!
Well, here we are – the advent candle is all but burned down, and the Blog Advent journey is over. I’d love to say it’s been an undiluted pleasure – more than one evening I’ve got home from work, sat down after dinner, and muttered something about ‘still having to do the sodding blog!’, but it’s great to know that I can do it, even at this time of year.
I plan to have a few days off now – I think Hubby’s feeling like a bit of a blog-widow! I wish you all a wonderful Christmas (don’t forget that tomorrow is only the start of the 12 Days of Christmas, which go on until Epiphany – it’s not called Twelfth Night for nothing!), and after the dust has settled I’ll have a few updates, and things which are still secrets for now, to share with you.
Merry Christmas everyone!
I’m trying to write a post a day during Advent, so, please come along with me while I try to Blog Advent – the Country Skills Way – and forgive me if I don’t quite manage it!
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While I suppose a lot of people have their eyes firmly on Christmas Day at the moment – family and friends, food and drink, gifts and treats – I’m also looking through and out the other side, to Boxing Day. Probably if I’m honest I put more time and effort – certainly ahead of time – into the food on Boxing Day than I do to the food on Christmas Day itself. After all, Christmas dinner, in the end, more or less boils down to a roast dinner with pretensions!
Boxing Day dinner so often is Christmas leftovers – but in my house it’s a feast of cold cuts. The ham, which I smoked earlier this month, is slowly defrosting ready for cooking tomorrow. I have a handful of lovely cheeses, all ready. The spiced plum chutney I made in the summer is now nicely matured. The sourdough, of course, I made yesterday. There may be some leftover goose, depending on our appetites. There’s a game pie, which we collected today from our local farm shop butcher. And to complete the feast, of course, we’ll be wanting some pate. I’ve always bought this in the past, and always been slightly disappointed compared to the rest of the wonderful spread.
This recipe is mostly inspired by Delia Smiths’ recipe for Coarse Country Pate, and by the Farmhouse Pate recipe in Raymond Blanc’s classic ‘Cooking For Friends’ which I picked up in the Oxfam shop last time I was in Launceston.
To make this pate, you will require –
Mince up the bacon in a food processor, leaving a bit of texture to it (how much texture is up to you!). Then, seperately, mince up the liver, again to leave a bit of texture though this will go smoother faster, so watch carefully! Combine all of these together in a mixing bowl, do it thoroughly and for goodness’ sake use your hands! Now crush the juniper berries and peppercorns in a pestle and mortar along with the salt. Add the herbs and spices to the meats, and again mix as thoroughly as you can. Finally, add the liquids, and mix again.
Something magical happens when the wine and brandy mix with the meats – what started out a bit like a big bowl of sausage meat suddenly becomes silky and the aromas, oh my! Allow the bowl to rest for an hour or so in a coolish place.
Arrange the bay leaves and juniper berries in the bottom of your loaf tin. Now take your two rashers of streaky bacon, and place then between two sheets of baking parchment. Roll them out really thin with a rolling pin. They will easily double in width, and a bit more. To get them into the loaf tin, I cut away all but the parchment under them, and push this rasher-side-down into the bottom of the loaf tin before carefully peeling away the paper.
Now pack all the pate mix into the tin, levelling it carefully. Put the loaf tin into the roasting tin and fill this half way up with boiling water, and put the whole lot in an oven at 150 degrees for an hour and three quarters.
The block of pate will shrink back from the sides of the tin during cooking, and will be surrounded by fat and jelly juices. Let it stand until nearly cool, and then it’s time to press the pate. It’s pressed for two reasons – firstly, to compact it and reduce the risk of it crumbling when you slice it, but secondly – and just as importantly for me! – to compact the bottom so you can turn it out neatly! It smells *wonderful*, just as I would have hoped. To press it, I covered the top with a double layer of tinfoil, put an old tupperware container on top, and then piled it up with all the weight I could muster. So, four tins of beans, and four litres of fruit juice ought to do the trick!
Once it’s had a really good squeeze, and cooled right down to room temperature, put the pate and whatever weight you can conveniently keep on top of it, move it into the fridge, where it will keep quite happily in its juices and rest and improve for three days before serving.
It’s a new recipe to me, so I’ll be back to tell you how it worked out! But the smell, oh my, I can’t see it being anything other than lovely! With crusty (maybe toasted, even?) home-made sourdough. And pickles!
I’m trying to write a post a day during Advent, so, please come along with me while I try to Blog Advent – the Country Skills Way – and forgive me if I don’t quite manage it!
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So, somehow it’s got to be the final weekend before Christmas, and it feels like only a few days ago that we hung out the fabric advent calendar, and I started on my mad-cap plan to blog every day in Advent, as if there wasn’t enough to do in the run up to Christmas!
There’s always a lot to do in the final few days, and while today has been almost entirely occupied with preparations for the big day, there’s not an awful lot in there which is very blog-worthy, mostly for reason of avoiding spoilers for guests and gift recipients reading this blog.
The sourdough loaves for Christmas and Boxing Day are baked. Sourdough has been one of my great discoveries this year – I really can’t figure out how I lived without great home-baked bread! On Christmas Day, we’ll have it as a starter, with home-cured and smoked trout and goats’ cheese. On Boxing Day, it will be part of the traditional day-after spread of cold ham, meats, pates, cheese, pies and pickles – and I think it’s going to stand up to that, really, very well!
We did our final shop for food and drinks today – it’s always a blasted nuisance, but fortunately we’ve planned ahead and sourced as much from local suppliers, farm shops, and home-made as we could, so it was less of a chore than it might have been. Good to feel everything is under control, and we collect the goose from the local farm butcher’s tomorrow.
I spent quite a bit of time this afternoon sorting out, labelling, and wrapping the Christmas gift hampers that are a big part of my gift giving for close family and friends. I know that some of them read this blog, so no details for now I’m afraid! But here they are, all packed in recycled boxes (I’ve been saving, begging and borrowing Amazon boxes and suchlike from colleagues the last few weeks!), and the contain jams and preserves (which, if you’ve been paying attention over the last six months, you may have had a hint about!), hedgerow liqueurs, and some other home-made surprises which I’ve carefully not been writing about here!
And we’re very close now, three sleeps ’till Christmas, and the Advent candle that started burning 22 days ago is now very nearly gone…
I’m trying to write a post a day during Advent, so, please come along with me while I try to Blog Advent – the Country Skills Way – and forgive me if I don’t quite manage it!
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We’ve made it to December the 21st, and while this might be a bit premature, I feel reasonably confident in saying that it’s not the end of the world!
It is, however, the Solstice. Hurray! In the northern hemisphere, the shortest day is over and the light is coming back into the world. We’re a few days from celebrating Christmas, of course, but there’s very little doubt that the early Christian churches essentially crashed the existing, pagan, solstice parties for the second biggest ‘do’ of their religious year.
Like a lot of people, I feel the dark days of winter pressing down on me. I joke sometimes that I must have evolved from something that hibernated, because I could quite happily pull the duvet over my head in mid November and not come out until March. Honestly, I really wish I could! Christmas is a bright light shining from the long dark days of winter, and I fully understand why our forefathers would have celebrated the arrival of the solstice – and the return of the light – with much feasting and drinking, even though the hardest, hungriest days of winter were still to come.
I’m always fascinated to find out how we come to hold the folk beliefs that we do, so I was particularly interested to hear a couple of years ago about the Sami goddess of spring and fertility. Her name is Beaivi (or variant spellings), and she was widely worshipped among the people of Fennoscandia (broadly modern Scandinavia). Her main celebration was winter solstice, when she was believed to fly through the sky with her daughter in sled of reindeer antlers. Her followers would sacrifice a white female reindeer, and thread pieces of the meat onto a wooden stick, twist it into a circle, and decorate it with bright ribbons.
Beaivi, incidentally, is the goddess of fertility and sanity – particularly beautifully observed, I would say, as both are brought back by the light of spring.
The Father Christmas / Santa Claus character is such a great cultural cocktail of a myth. Clearly there’s some northern European solstice god(dess) in the mix – at least that’s the best theory I can find about how the reindeer got there! Add to this a good measure of Christian crusades Saint (step forward, St Nick!), and then top up with a generous glug CocaCola! Since, while the Victorians had all but invented modern Father Christmas, his suit is not usually one of red with white trim – his colours ran much more to the spruce green! It’s not entirely clear that CocaCola were the first people to dress him in red and white, at the start of the 20th century, but certainly they popularised the choice, and then published it widely. Well, consider the branding… **holidays are coming… holidays are coming…**
So the jolly fat man, with a red suit and a big white beard, rides around in a sleigh pulled by reindeer (they’ve got off lightly, then, since Beaivi’s day), bringing toys to all the good boys and girls, but no longer threatening the bad boys and girls with a lump of coal and a righteous beating…
But Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen (and their latterly-discovered friend, Rudolf) have an identity problem, because at this time of year, the only reindeer with antlers are the female ones!
Incidentally, if you haven’t yet come across Terry Pratchett’s ‘Hogfather’, I can heartily recommend it for a great bit of seasonal reading (or viewing, the TV adaptation from a few years back is remarkably good), it’s a fabulous bit of sideways-on myth re-imagining!
I’m trying to write a post a day during Advent, so, please come along with me while I try to Blog Advent – the Country Skills Way – and forgive me if I don’t quite manage it!
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Like Scrooge, we’re all haunted, a little bit, by the ghosts of our Christmases past. In my ‘Blog Advent’ post on December 6, I wrote a little about my memories of St Nicholas, from the time I spent growing up in Switzerland as a young child. These were my formative Christmas memories, so of course I hark back to them every year.
One tradition which is still widely practiced in Switzerland and Germany – and not at all, in the UK – is the habit of putting real candles in domestic Christmas trees. I love this – it feels so utterly ‘proper’ and festive to me! Yes, of course it’s a fire risk – but so is any lit candle or open fire. Our neighbours, in the small Swiss village where we lived, seemed to manage to avoid setting fire to their houses every year!
Hubby is very British about this – the whole idea seems to him like a huge fire hazard just waiting to burst into a ball of flames. I asked him to suggest a title for this post and his suggestion ‘Flaming Torch of Christmas Death!’ rather sums up his position on the issue! It’s not so black and white, to me – after all, people were managing to set fire to their living rooms with the small incandescent Christmas tree lightbulbs well into the 21st century.
But all good relationships are about compromise, so while I wait for him to come around to my way of thinking (this, folks, may well be some time!) I picked up these pretty hanging baubles designed to take tea light candles. Rather than equip them with a naked flame, I’ve used some LED tea lights which, while not *quite* convincingly the real deal, flicker gently with a warm golden light, and, at least out of the corner of your eye, might just be little candle flames in my tree.
Not many days left on the advent candle, either! I had so many bits and pieces I wanted to get done today – my last weekday off between now and Christmas – but instead I spent most of it gently nursing this nasty cold. Here’s hoping it’s gone by the weekend!
I’m trying to write a post a day during Advent, so, please come along with me while I try to Blog Advent – the Country Skills Way – and forgive me if I don’t quite manage it!
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It feels like a very long time since we were on the beach in Cornwall with Dave, back in October! Dave adores the beach – the seaside is his favourite ever place.
After he was done posing for his portrait (well, doesn’t the backdrop suit him??), I indulged in a spot of beach combing along the strand line, and collected up some pieces of driftwood. Only small lengths, the longest was about 8 inches long. They had to fit in my pocket!
I put them together into this small driftwood Christmas tree. It’s lashed together with jute twine, a bit like the twig and twine star decorations I made earlier this month. If you wanted it a bit more solid, it would be simple to add a blob of hot glue or other adhesive between the ‘stem’ and the ‘branches’ before wrapping with twine or ribbon in whatever decorative way you favour. It makes a very pretty hanging decoration – I’ve got it on the end of a bookcase in the hall.
The scale is a question only for your imagination and your driftwood supply! I had visions of making a tree a couple of feet high, possibly hanging, with a thick piece of jute rope threaded through a drilled hole in the centre of each of the driftwood branches. An idea for the future, perhaps – I need to live a lot closer to the sea!
I’m trying to write a post a day during Advent, so, please come along with me while I try to Blog Advent – the Country Skills Way – and forgive me if I don’t quite manage it!
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One of the Christmas traditions I don’t relish, but seem to ‘enjoy’ every year all the same, is my traditional pre-Christmas cold! Well, it’s here again, and almost perfectly on schedule! You have to look for the silver lining at times like this, and the up-side of a filthy winter cold is the perfect excuse for a beautiful hot toddy. It’s medicinal, honest!
My toddy is whisky based. But don’t use your best single malt – if your nasal passages are as stuffed up as mine, there’s no chance of you knowing the difference! You also need some honey, a lemon, a few cloves, three or four whole allspice berries, and a cinnamon stick. Oh, and some hot water.
Cut two thin slices from your lemon and stud each with a couple of cloves. Put these in your glass (I use a big red wine glass which I know can take the heat – they’re the glasses I use for mulled wine – but a tumbler or a glass with a handle are more traditional!) along with your allspice berries and cinnamon stick. From what’s left of your lemon, cut a wedge amounting to about a quarter of a lemon and squeeze the juice into the glass. Add two teaspoons of the honey (more or less to taste – that’s my personal preference) and a double measure of whisky, and stir with your cinnamon stick until combined.
Now top up with water from the kettle, which you’ve allowed to go just off the boil. If you’re not *that* keen on cinnamon, take the stick out at this point, otherwise leave all the whole spices in. Stick your nose in the glass and breathe deeply – you should be able to appreciate the spicy aromatic hit through even the thickest head cold. Then sip, and enjoy. All the Christmas spices with a bonus dose of vitamin C, and some lovely soothing whisky. Drink it while it’s still piping hot.
How could something that tastes so wonderful fail to be good for you??? You know, I think I may be poorly enough that I need to take a second dose!
I’m trying to write a post a day during Advent, so, please come along with me while I try to Blog Advent – the Country Skills Way – and forgive me if I don’t quite manage it!
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Christmas cake is a real ‘anchor’ for me, one of those food experiences that connects back, right through my life and my family history. I wrote a bit last year about how baking the cake takes me back, every year. I learned my cake from my grandmother – she learned it from Delia! – and I’ve only ever baked it and decorated it this one way.
After it’s been baked, usually some time in early November, I wrap it up in a few layers of greaseproof paper and stash it away in a tin. To keep it happy, it gets a tot of booze every week or so. For the last few years I’ve baked it with, and then fed it on calvados (French apple brandy), because I think it adds an extra lovely fruity note compared to the traditional sort.
Once it’s nicely sozzled, and in time for Christmas, it’s time to get it all dressed up in its party frock! More years than I can count, I’ve ended up decorating the cake on Christmas Eve – but I’ve been a bit better organised this year (well, OK, I wanted to make sure it was all ready in case someone fancied a slice this weekend!).
I ice my cake in two layers, first a nice thick layer of marzipan, and then a layer of royal icing. Finally, the cake gets a decorative marzipan poinsettia to top it off.
First, to make sure the marzipan sticks down securely, I brush the cake with melted apricot jam, slightly loosened with some water and warmed in a pan on the hob. A desert spoon of jam or so is plenty. Brush it on generously with a pastry brush. This is home-made jam, so has some big chunks of apricot in it, which isn’t a problem, just work around them and leave them in the pan!
Now roll out your marzipan. Mine was bought (sorry!) nice golden marzipan. There’s about a kilo here. When working with marzipan, use icing sugar to dust down your surfaces and rolling pin, the same way you’d use flour when working with bread or pastry. Roll the marzipan out to the thickness you prefer, and make sure that it’s plenty bigger than the cake and sides in all directions.
I know the baking aficionados on telly would have you apply your marzipan in two pieces – a round piece for the top of the cake, and a long thin band around the side. I can’t see any reason to do this, for this cake at least – if you’re careful it’s possible to get a perfect layer with a one-piece approach. In fact, the only merit I can see to the two-piece approach would be if you’re trying to get a sharp, 90 degree edge between the top and sides of your cake – in which case you’ve already started by cutting the top off – what a waste! Gently place the big, rolled out piece of marzipan straight over the centre of the cake.
Now, very gently, using the palms of your hands (dusted with icing sugar as required) push the ‘skirts’ inwards, towards the sides of the cake. As you can see, I managed to get it all to sit snugly against the side of the cake. But if you muck it up and get folds? Just trim off the excess marzipan from the fold with a sharp knife, and stick the edges back together using a little bit of tap water. The icing will conceal a multitude of sins!
Trim off the excess marzipan. I used the edge of the board as a cutting guide. This sounds a bit generous, but it’s about the distance you want to leave. I’ve over-trimmed in the past, and had to add extra marzipan back, so I now subscribe to the adage that you can always cut more later! Once cut, gently nudge the marzipan in towards the base of the cake all around. Anywhere you have an excess of marzipan, trim a bit more at this stage. You’ll be surprised how little there is, though. Wrap up any extra marzipan you have left over tightly in cling film, and store in the fridge.
Ideally, let the marzipan dry out for a couple of days before applying the icing, though I’ve done it all in one night from time to time when necessary! This gap is supposed to reduce the oiliness in the marzipan to reduce the risk of this ‘striking through’ and discolouring the icing. I’m not sure how or whether this works, to be honest, and I’d love to say I’ve noticed a difference. But I had time this year, so I gave it the 48 hours.
My royal icing is made up of 3 large egg whites (I weigh my home-produced eggs and compare them to the egg size guide for this sort of cooking, since obviously they don’t come out of the hens graded!) 500g of icing sugar, and a teaspoon of glycerine. I have forgotten the glycerine once or twice – it’s not a disaster if you can’t get any, but doing so does mean the icing sets very hard, so mind your dentures!
Start by spooning your icing sugar into your egg whites a bit at a time, stirring as you go. It will look horrible and lumpy until right at the end, so don’t despair. Once it’s all incorporated, and you have a heavy gloppy-sort of consistency, start beating the mix with an electric whisk. You really do want the electric whisk for this job – trust me, I’ve made royal icing with just a hand whisk one year, it’s *incredibly* hard work! – and ideally, if you have one, use your stand mixer.
Even with an electric whisk it will take about ten minutes to get to the consistency you want, and I found that even with a handheld whisk I tended to get to the ‘I’m bored, sod it, that’ll do’ stage before the mix was really done!
You’re after ‘stiff peaks’, which roughly means that the icing stays in whatever shape you place it in. If you stop the whisk, you’ll get an idea pretty quickly by watching what happens to the ripples in the icing, which should be very stable. You can test this by raising some peaks with the point of a knife, or your spatula. If they stay there, you’re done. Add your spoon of glycerine and stir this through the mix. It adds a lovely shine to the icing.
Now, start slapping it onto the cake.
Rough is good – you’re after a ‘snow scene’ effect, though I’ll be honest and say I’ve never seen a snow scene quite like this!
Still, it’s what my grandmother’s cake looked like, so it is with mine! Once you’re happy you have a good covering, spoon any extra icing into a small plastic bag, and tie this off securely, excluding all air, and stick this bag in the fridge for later. The icing now needs to set for at least 24 hours. Then, it’s time for the final flourish. For me, it has to be a poinsettia pattern in marzipan, but you could just as easily add holly leaves & berries, or even a Christmas tree, using a very similar approach.
Dig out the surplus marzipan from the fridge, and divide it into uneven thirds (two larger, one smaller). Dye the two larger portions red and green using food colouring. I find putting a sheet of cling film down on the kitchen counter when playing with food dye seriously simplifies the clean-up. Also use plenty of icing sugar to stop things sticking.
It was around this point that I remembered that last year, I’d made a mental note to try to find some better food colouring – I’m sure the food colouring my grandmother had only ever took a couple of drops, I seemed to have to ladle this stuff in by the spoonful! Mind you, it was probably full of nasty artificial colours we’re not allowed to use these days… You’ll get there eventually, even if your food dye is as wimpy as mine, and have the building blocks of your final decoration.
Roll out your green marzipan, and cut out a first set of six poinsettia leaves (or however many holly leaves, whatever you fancy). I do this freehand, but you could easily cut make yourself a paper or card template. Snip the corner off the bag of royal icing, and you have a little prepared piping bag. Blob a little onto the centre of the cake and use it to glue down your leaves. Then carry on with the red leaves, in much the same way. Finally, finish with some plain yellow berries in the centre.
Dab the marzipan with a damp piece of kitchen paper to remove any loose icing sugar, and finish with a ribbon, if you like.
That’s it, all done! Round about now, I get to feel quite proud, very Christmassy, and revel in the connection to decades of family Christmas tradition.
I’m trying to write a post a day during Advent, so, please come along with me while I try to Blog Advent – the Country Skills Way – and forgive me if I don’t quite manage it!
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After the ‘fishmonger’ at Morrisons managed to completely ruin some beautiful fish with a bodged filleting job, there was no way I was letting them have another crack at the task! The replacement trout we chose were completely unprepared – a bit of a job for us, but at least we could make sure it was done properly this time!
There’s a tradition of fish-eating at Christmas in many countries, with carp featuring on many European Christmas tables. We’ll often have fish on Christmas Eve, and whole fish make a great celebration dish – salmon can be a fabulous alternative Christmas dinner for those not so keen on poultry or red meat.
A lot of people are frightened by fish preparation, and there’s really no need to be. There are knacks, sure, and you won’t be very fast to start with, but preparing a whole fish from scratch is actually really quite straightforward (and, really, not at all disgusting!).
You’ll need two knives, a small pointy paring-type knife for gutting, and a long, thin knife for filleting. Both need to be very sharp.
First, you’ll need to gut your fish. In most cases, this will have been done for you, unless you’ve caught the fish yourself. Fresh fish doesn’t smell, but can be very ‘slimy’! This mucus coating helps protect the fish’s skin and scales, in life, and helps it move smoothly through the water. It’s worth taking a bit of time to remove this, if you can. I find it easiest to wash the fish in cold water and wipe the mucus away with kitchen towel. Going to a bit of trouble to do this will make the fish easier to keep hold of, and, especially if you’re trying knife skills you’re not familiar with, will probably improve your success and safety!
WIth a small sharp pointy knife, make small stab incision just behind the head, between the pectoral fins. Without stabbing too deeply inside the abdomen, extend this incision lengthways until you get to the vent, just in front of the anal fin. Reach into the abdomen and gently pull out the contents.
The end of the gut should come away from the vent at the back, with some gentle traction. The attachment behind the head is stronger, pull this out as well as you can, and then cut it away with the knife. There will probably be a bit of blood spilled at this point – just wash the cavity out with cold running water.
Your fish is now ready to cook, if you’re planning to prepare it whole. If not, then it’s time to fillet it. Put your small pointy knife away now, as you want a long, thin, sharp knife for this bit.
Position your fish on the board with the dorsal fin towards you (belly facing away). Make a cut behind the gills and pectoral fins, into the flesh, perpendicular to the backbone. Stop when you can feel the backbone, don’t cut through.
Now turn the blade 90 degrees with the blade pointing towards the tail, and, grasping the head firmly, start to cut the flesh parallel with, and as close to the backbone as you can. Go slowly – it’s not a race!
After you’ve cut a little way, you’ll be able to hold onto the fillet instead of the head, which will make the whole process a lot easier to control.
Carry on now, all the way to the tail. Congratulations, you’ve got a fillet! Don’t worry if there are ribs attached at this stage – we’ll get to that later.
Put your fillet to one side, turn the fish over, and do the same the other side. The head of the fish will be facing the opposite direction, ad you may find the whole process a bit ‘backhanded’ this way around. Just go slowly and take the time you need. Personally I don’t find it helpful to work with the fish’s belly pointing towards me for the second side, but you may find it easier, so give it a go that way if you’re finding it particularly awkward.
You can see from this photo, it’s a tidy job and almost no waste!
Now you want to tidy up your fillet. Gently scrape, and wash away any bloody material on the fillet under running water. Now, using your long thin knife, insert it under any ribs that are left attached, and trim these away, trying not to take any flesh with you.
Pin bones are the little bones that you’ll feel running from the front of your fillet towards the middle, along the lateral line of the fish. If you’re planning to cook your fillet, I probably wouldn’t bother with them – they’re easy enough to pick out once the fish is cooked, and pretty small and soft in a fish of this size. I’m curing and smoking this fish, so I tried to remove them all. You can cut them out in a narrow ‘wedge’ of muscle, or pull them out individually with tweezers. Both are quite fiddly and time consuming and leave a bit of a tear in the muscle, so try both and see which works best for you!
Finally, trim away any fins and tidy up any ragged edges. I’m quite proud of this batch of fillets and I’m sure they’re going to make absolutely lovely smoked trout for Christmas food and gifts! They’re in the fridge, curing, right now.
So don’t be afraid of that whole fish – it’s quite likely you too can do a better job of preparing and filleting it than whoever the supermarket has working behind their fish counter today!
I’m trying to write a post a day during Advent, so, please come along with me while I try to Blog Advent – the Country Skills Way – and forgive me if I don’t quite manage it!
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