Shopping list = 4kg salt. Sure, why not?

Last night I cooked my MasterChef dish. You know. It’s the dish we’ve all thought about. The one dish that you’d cook to wow Gary, George and Matt. Well, I’ve found mine.

Whole Fish Baked in a Salt Crust

So there I was lugging home several bags of salt (purchased under the bewildered eye of my local Woollies checkout chick) and embarking on one of my favourite types of recipes from the last ten months. These recipes I speak of, are the ones that seem at the otuset to be super difficult, time consuming and frankly, a bit ridiculous. And then I find myself sitting down to eat them and thinking that actually they are nowhere near as difficult and ridiculous as they first seemed, but actually incredibly fun and rewarding. And pretty impressive, if I do say so myself.

To make the salt crust, I whipped (by hand, with a whisk – for no real reason other than I felt like the workout!) two egg whites to soft peaks, then mixed them through the salt. I actually only used two kilograms of salt in the end (leaving me with a few spare bags) – it just seemed crazy to be using 4kgs. I used half the salt mixture to line the bottom of a baking tray and then I sat my two whole Rainbow Trout (a very pretty fish, reminding me of my childhood) on the salt base. They were stuffed with rosemary and thyme and rubbed with oil.




Then I poured the rest of the salt mixture over the top, leaving the tails exposed, but making sure that every other part of the fish was covered, so that nothing could escape.




Then I popped them into a hot oven for 20 minutes.





Then came the interesting part. And obviously I hadn’t really thought this through, because I tried to remove my salt crust with a rubber spatula. Insert incorrect buzzer here. The crust was rock hard. Yes, rock salt mixed with egg whites and baked goes really really hard. Rock hard. Get it?

I’ve since read that the best way to remove the crust is with a saw (or a bread knife, but whatever), but isn’t that just the beauty of hindsight? I hadn’t read that, so I battled with a metal serving spoon, trying not to butcher the perfectly tender and juicy fish beneath the surface. Finally I got my first chunk off and that made it a little easier to remove the rest of it in chunks, eventually exposing the fish.

Once I had the fish out of there and on the plate, I peeled the skin off too. Apparently the skin protects the flesh from the salt, so the skin itself is incredibly salty.

So there we were, me & Ash, in awe of these beautiful fish. Pink, oily, tender flesh. Born out of rocky white cocoon. It was absolutely delicious. Served with my favourite fennel, pea and parsley salad. Yum!

I’ll put it out there and say the MasterChef judges would have been impressed. I’m sure of it. Least I hope Gary would be. I love Gary.

Xx