Maybe I have some kind of latent OCD, but I tend to get an inordinate amount of pleasure when things work efficiently, particularly with food. I’m perhaps not the greatest practicer of this in reality, but still try to limit the food waste in my house as much as possible. I’d like to think this was done in some kind of altruistic, planet saving kind of way, but it’s more do with the fact I just hate throwing food away that could have given me pleasure through me eating it.

Thus being a fan of Allegra McEvedy already and combining that with the fact that the Economy Gastronomy book/series, aims to reduce food wastage and make full use of the ingredients was bound to tick a lot of boxes for me. 

The main principle of the economy gastronomy method is to buy one, main, high quality ingredient which you can then use to make several meals. These ones were for Salmon, but I adapted them when I saw a lovely, whole, Wild Sea Trout. I have to admit, it was the most I’ve ever spent on a fish (£25), but the amount of food it yielded actually made it pretty good value.

The first thing I had to do was fillet the trout, which I made a bit of a hash of, to be honest. It was not so much filleted, but butchered, but I did manage to get a couple of decent size fillets out of it.

I cut a couple of pieces off one of the fillets to make the first, meal, pan-fried trout with peas, homemade hollandaise sauce and potato wedges. I then used the economy gastronomy recipe (here) to poach the rest of the fillets, freezing the head and rest of the body for fish soup, at a later date.

The meat from the poached trout was then partly used to make fish cakes and the rest saved for a few meals for little Biggest Jim.  The fish cake recipe isn’t online anymore (it was on the Guardian Food section for a while, but due to some copyright agreement, only stayed for a few weeks), but it used the liquid that the fish was poached in to make a sauce which was then mixed in with the potato and poached fish. I’m not sure that this method worked that well, to be honest, although the creme fraiche tartare to go with the fish cakes was definitely a winner.

Enough fish cakes were made to feed six, or three meals for two and that, along with the initial meal and the fish soup that will feed at least two, made a total of 5 meals for 2.5 people. At £2.50 per person per meal, I didn’t think that was too bad at all.