Recipe corner - Trout and Parma ham

I was browsing a couple of new food blogs the other day and was struck by the utter beauty of the accompanying photography.  Damn these people who are able to create delicious food and make it look good too.  It's not just the finished products that look good either - it's the casually strewn about strands of spaghetti, the gentle curve of a cherry tomato on the side of a saucer, or an artfully placed carrot/knife installation.  I've tried to do that, I really have, and they just look like I'm being my usual, haphazard self.  What I want to know is, do these people ever eat a hot meal?  I mean, really, when I'm plating up my dinner my thought processes are usually along the lines of "Must get food to belly as quickly as possible*....oh, should take a picture for the blog, where's the phone, grab, point, click - and we'll see if I can Instagram it into oblivion later."

*The naked greed demonstrated by this sentence is probably one of the reasons that I am fat.

Anyway, for today's example of the worst food photographer on the Blogosphere I give you:

Yeah.  Lucky it tasted good.

This is surf and turf Nigel Slater style, based very closely upon his original recipe here.  Trout, smeared with flavoured butter, wrapped in Parma ham and baked in the oven it was one of the tastiest things that I have cooked and eaten in a while.  And, despite a generous helping of butter, points friendly. 

I chose to make the butter in advance and chill it.  You could avoid this step and just smear the room temperature butter on the fish when assembling which would be a slightly quicker albeit messier process.  I'd probably just end up getting butter everywhere and be forced to lick it off my fingers.*

*The ardent love of butter demonstrated in this sentence is probably another reason why I am fat.

I served this with new potatoes which could be squished into the buttery juices, and the tail end of this year's asparagus (sob!)

Ingredients

2 trout fillets (approx. 110g each)
50g Parma ham in thin slices
30g butter
Clove of garlic, crushed
Tsp dried sage (or use fresh if, unlike me, you remember to buy it; dried worked perfectly well)
2 lemon wedges
Handful of flatleaf parsley, roughly chopped.

Serves 2, 8 pro points per portion

Make the butter in advance if you wish; ensure the butter itself is at room temperature and mash together with the crushed garlic, sage and some seasoning.  Tip the softened butter onto a small square of clingfilm and roll up into a little sausage of artery clogging goodness.  Bung in the fridge for a couple of hours to firm up.

When ready to cook, preheat the oven to 180.

Divide your slices of Parma ham into two portions and lay out vertically on a board.  Season the trout and then set, horizontally and skin side up, on the top of the ham to form a cross shape. 

Remove the butter sausage from the fridge, liberate from the clingfilm and thinly slice.  Lay the slices of butter on top of the trout.  Wrap the Parma ham around the trout fillet not bothering if the ends remain exposed.

Sit the fish, skin side up, in a baking dish with the two wedges of lemon.  Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes.  Before serving, squeeze over the roasted lemon juice and sprinkle with chopped parsley.