Chambéry Trout with Salsa Verde

Nigella uses a lot of vermouth in this book, so I picked up a bottle of Noilly Prat on the weekend. (By the way, both Chambéry and Noilly Prat are types of vermouth, and I couldn’t find any Chambéry at Dan Murphy’s…)

26. Chambéry Trout
27. Salsa Verde

I really, really didn’t feel like cooking today. I was in the library all day today, studying for my next and final exam – Organisational Behaviour – which is coming up on Friday, and then I had to go to buy fish on the way home. By the time I got home I was so frazzled I couldn’t concentrate. Lucky for me, then, that this was easy to prepare.

OK, enough complaining, back to the food. Nigella suggests broad beans as an accompaniment. When I got home, I took a 500g packet out of the freezer, and ran warm water over them to thaw. Then Mum and I slipped off all the skins, to reveal the vibrantly green inner bean. A warning for you though, when you remove the skins, the amount of beans you end up with looks pitifully small. So I boosted quantities with some peas. I also did potatoes – just some new potatoes, thinly sliced and put in a single layer on a tray in the oven whilst the fish was cooking.

Speaking of which, you poach the trouts in a mixture of water and vermouth for 20 minutes in the oven. And for the salsa verde, (which is an Italian parsley sauce), you just chuck everything in the processor. Easy.


Noilly Prat


1 Plate

Verdict: Good. Not in the super-spectacular, “Quick! Let’s get Sarah a rich husband” type of league, but still very nice. My dad, especially, loved it, and it was a good contrast because we’ve been having a lot of chicken and meat recently. I like trout, and it’s only $12.90 a kilo. As I said, it was very easy to prepare, requiring only minimal involvement in the cooking process.

Broad beans are fantastic. You know, I had no idea my brother likes them. Loves them, in fact. As he walked through the door, he saw them sitting in a colander, and promptly declared “Hey! I love these things!”, and ate one. Silly bugger, they were still raw.

By the way, I didn’t cook last night, Monday night. Mum made Hainan Chicken Rice instead. I spent the whole day at uni studying, and couldn’t be arsed planning anything. On that day, my inner domestic goddess… well, she stayed in.