Baked Rainbow Trout with Lemon and Dill

Cooking a whole fish looks like far more of a project than it actually is. You stuff the cavity with a few slices of lemon and some herbs, dot it with butter, and the oven does everything else while you get on with the rest of dinner. Rainbow trout is a lovely one to start with if you’ve never done it before, because the fillets lift cleanly off the bone once it’s cooked and there isn’t much in the way of fiddly little bones to pick out.

Dill and trout belong together. It’s a soft, slightly aniseedy herb that would bully a more delicate fish, but trout has enough of its own flavour to hold its ground. A bit of lemon in the cavity steams away in there and keeps the flesh moist, and the butter and garlic melt down into a simple sauce that pools in the tray.

You’ll know it’s done when the flesh at the thickest part behind the head turns from glassy to opaque and comes away from the backbone when you push a fork into it. Twenty to twenty five minutes does it for a fish this size, and it’s better to check early than to leave it in and dry it out.

Any leftovers are brilliant cold the next day. I flake the meat off the bones while it’s still slightly warm, keep it in a tub in the fridge and take it to work with some salad, which is a much nicer lunch than whatever I’d have thrown together that morning. If you fancy something in a similar vein, my baked whole sea bream is well worth a go.