Smoked Gurnard

Been meaning to share this for some time. Nothing to it but it transforms the humble Gurnard into a  meal worth remembering.

Gurnard - a fish with attitude

 So long as you work either side of the central scale ribbon running along its back, whilst avoiding its spines, filleting is straightforward. There is a lot of bone and head for fairly small fillets, so choose a good sized one that looks plump, not wasted post spawning. Unless you want to make some fish stock, you will probably want to get the fishmonger to fillet it for you.
Get out your Camerons smoker, or similar and scatter a small handful of Alder chips around the base. This time I used Apple chips but to my mind it was not as good, so go for Alder if you can. Lightly oil the grid, wipe the open flesh sides of the fillets with oil, a twist of pepper then place flesh side down on the grid. Repeat with the top skin sides and assemble smoker. Put on a just a little higher than medium hotplate, wait until some smoke escape and time for around eight minutes. It really doesn't need very long at all. Check, touch to make sure the flesh is cooked. Take off heat and reserve then serve. It is excellent, hot or cold, needs no further embellishment. As you can see, I dressed it with lightly pickled pink shallot rings.

Tasty Lunch variation

Clearly I love my sprats on toast with tomato. Tried out this variation and, can you believe it was even better! First off it was helped that I used our own beef tomato that was so sweet and tender, such a difference compared to the hard flavourless commercial 'vine' tomatoes. So generally follow my previous Tasty Lunch post. But having butterfly filleted the sprats and cleaned the inside of the fillets with a kitchen towel, the next step is to take some very thin cut prosciutto ham and cut into long strips, the length of the slice, about 30mm wide. Layout on a board. Take each fillet with tail end, less fin, placed at the bottom edge of the ham with the rest of the fillet lying on the ham up towards the top. Cut a firm gherkin into long thick strips, about 6mm square and roughly 50mm long. Place a gherkin strip on the fillet end, then, making sure you pick up the end of the ham, roll is tightly up, place with the top end of ham at the bottom to keep it in shape. Now grill with a sprinkle of olive oil for about four minutes until fish flesh turns white and ham begins to crisp, Keep a watch and do not over cook them. Keep warm and set aside

Now time for the toast, lightly grilled, cut off the crust if you prefer and coated with your prepared tomato mixture (skinned tomato, shallot, garlic, olive oil, all lightly blitzed) taking it right to the edges and then place a line of thin raw tomato slices along the toast. Splash of oil put toast and tomato mixture under the grill briefly until the raw tomato just softens, remove, place the sprat rolls onto the toast and enjoy with a green salad.