GRILLED TROUT

Taupo Times, Volume II, Issue 97, 27 November 1953, Page 7

GRILLED TROUT

HOW TO COOK IT A Taupo trout grilled in the open air will, if selected with judgment and cooked with care, provide as good a meai as any holiday-maker ever deserved. The selection of the trout to be cooked is the first problem, and, the only way to solve it is to choose the best fish in your catch. Unless your friend has caught a better one, in which case you acquire that. In other words, the fish must be in really good condition.

Having been selected, the honoured fish should be cleaned as soon as possible after being killed, decapitated and split open. It is a good idea to remove the backbone, though this is not absolutely necessary. Rub in a reasonable amount of salt and sprinkle withj pepper. If you have time to keepi the fish, at this stage, for a few hours, before' cooking, it is a good plan but not essential. The best type of grid-iron is one made from ordinary fencing wire, and it | should be considerably larger andl have a longer handle than those usually seen. One eighteen inches square will not be too large, and the convenience of a handle in proportion will be realised the first fcime you are lucky enough to find yourself trying to balance it across hot embers on a couple of lumps of pumice.

If , for any unfortunate reason, you are in a hurry, you may grill your trout in from ten to fifteen minutes by livening up the fire or| .owering the grid-iron a little. But hurry and bustle is as out-of-place n this department of the angling art as in others. I like to recall izaak Walton's reference to angling as being "the contemplative man's | recreation." That adjective "contemplative" seems to breathe the spirit of leisurely peace and unaurried enjoyment of the present ohat should be characteristic of all angling. Try then, to avoid the necessity to hurry your grilling, and arrange your grid-iron at such a height above the fire that your i I .ish takes thirty minutes to cook. you will find it vastly better than I one done in half the time.

. To prevent the fish becoming dry | by losing too much of its natural fat during cooking, place on the grid-iron so that the skin side is down. After about ten minutes turn the other side down for five] minutes, then turning the skin-side down again, leave it so till cooked, and spread a few pate of butter over the upper side a few minutes before serving. If the fish is slightly "springy" between the teeth it is insufficiently cooked. But remember that the natural tendency at first is not to grill long enough. To the uninitiated nothing looks more cindery and generally "done-for" than the skin side of a trout after a few minutes grilling.

I was once grilling a noon-day trout when a lady in the party remarked to one of her companions, "Look 'ow 'e'p burning it, Jack; it ivon't be fit for nothing." Jack was I non-committal, but the lady conI tinued and at last, could not reI frain from asking me directly whether I were not "overdoing of it a bit." The day was hot, the fire was hot, and I felt even hotter than that. Holding out the gridiron in as dignified a manner aas possible under the circumstances "Madam," said I, "would you care to relieve me of the task?" I have always felt that had gentle old Izaak Walton been privipeged to grill a trout on a Taupo beach, he could not have improved very much on that enquiry. And 'it settled the lady.— "Tauponiard." ,