Picnic ocean trout, wild black pepper and verjuice mayonnaise

By: Mike McEnearney
From: Real Food by Mike
Serves: 5-6
Photographer: Alan Benson

Christmas lunch in Australia is always a fun affair for us. I love the freedom to be either at home with family, or to wander down to the beach to eat. This flexible way of cooking fish works for both options, as the fish will keep warm for 45 minutes after cooking. The seaweed is used to wrap around the fish, to help give it a natural salty seasoning from the sea. If you can’t find dulse, try using other seaweeds such as wakame, kombu or any other leaf seaweed. Mayonnaise is always on my radar with trout or salmon, and the wild pepper and verjuice mayonnaise here uses the softer tones of verjuice rather than vinegar, which allows the wild peppercorns to sing. Take the jar of mayonnaise with you to the picnic to have on the side with the trout. Serve with Mango, avocado, lime and lentil salad – the fruity mango salad with the zing of lime and the saltiness of capers and olives is a perfect match for the rich ocean trout flavours.

Ingredients

Quantity	Ingredient
1	newspaper, which you're happy to burn
2kg	ocean trout, scaled, gutted and gills removed
1	lemon, sliced
1 tablespoon	extra-virgin olive oil
1 packet	dried dulse seaweed, rehydrated in cold water for 30 minutes, then drained

Wild black pepper and verjuice mayonnaise

Quantity	Ingredient
2 teaspoons	voatsiperifery peppercorns
1	egg yolk
1 tablespoon	verjuice
1 teaspoon	dijon mustard
200ml	grapeseed oil

Method

For the wild pepper and verjuice mayonnaise, lightly toast the peppercorns in a frying pan over low heat for 2 minutes, just to refresh them. Allow to cool, then crush half of them roughly in a mortar and pestle.
In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolk, verjuice and mustard. While whisking, gradually pour in the grapeseed oil to create the mayonnaise. Add the ground peppercorns and adjust the seasoning with some salt and a little more verjuice to suit your palate – it should taste aromatic and spicy. Transfer the mayonnaise to a sterilised jar and scatter with the remaining peppercorns.
To cook the fish, preheat the oven to 220°C.
Open your newspaper out to the centre page. Pour 1 litre water over the newspaper to drench it and place a large piece of baking paper in the middle – as we don’t want the ink to come in contact with the fish. Place the sliced lemon in the fish’s belly. Rub the fish with the olive oil and a pinch of salt and wrap the dulse seaweed around the fish. Wrap up the fish tightly in the newspaper, making sure the baking paper is between the fish and the newspaper, and secure it with string. Now soak the entire package in water until the paper is sopping wet.
Place the package on a wire rack set in a baking tin and bake for 25 minutes. It’s now ready to eat. However, the beauty of this dish is that it will stay warm in its little cocoon for another 45 minutes, which gives you ample time to get to your picnic destination. If serving the fish immediately, allow it to rest for 10–15 minutes before cutting open the package, to allow the flesh to relax and the fish to finish cooking a little more inside the paper.
If you take the package to a picnic, take a pair of scissors with you to snip the string and prise the package open from the top.
Use a spoon to pull some fish from the bone and place it on a serving plate – it will flake off the bone very easily, as the fish has been steamed in the wet newspaper and will hold together beautifully before portioning. Serve with a dollop of the mayonnaise.

Note

A mix of sichuan and black peppercorns is a good option if you can’t find voatsiperifery peppercorns, which come from Madagascar.

Medicinal Benefit

Salmon is rich in a particular omega-3 fatty acid that helps control blood sugar and can therefore help with diabetes. It can also prevent heart disease by lowering ‘bad’ cholesterol. It’s high in selenium (for thyroid regulation) and potassium, to balance bodily fluids, maintain a steady heartbeat and help lower blood pressure. Salmon also contains an antioxidant called astaxanthin, which gives the flesh its orange colour. The benefits of this antioxidant mainly involve the skin as it has powerful UV-blocking properties. It helps protect fish eggs from sun damage; in humans, it’s been shown to reduce wrinkles.

Tags:

Picnic ocean trout, wild black pepper and verjuice mayonnaise

Ingredients

Wild black pepper and verjuice mayonnaise

Method

Note

Medicinal Benefit

Recipes

Books

Authors

Collections

Store

The Feed