Busy in the kitchen

I've been busy in the kitchen this morning. I'm having an experimental cook today. I've just par-boiled some new potatoes to saute up later. Then I made some aioli (garlic mayonnaise). I'm always a bit nervous doing this in case the egg yolk & oil separate rather than emulsify. All went well first time this time. Then through the aioli I folded some diced fennel bulb, chopped fennel herb & some ouzo. It certainly has an aniseed kick. The fennel herb I got from the front garden The fennel there is quite rampant now, a good 5ft high topped by great umbels of bright yellow flowers. A stem had broken, blown against the dividing wall & tending to fall into our neighbours' garden, so this is the stem that's gone in the aioli.

After that I went for a rummage in the freezer. I needed to locate the fish for today's dinner. I thought while I was at it I might as well move some of the oldest stuff from the bottom up to the top of the freezer. I'm anticipating doing a bit of freezer using up over the next week. It's the one disadvantage of a chest style freezer. You tend to just keep putting on top. On the other hand I can manage to go head first into the chest, resting on the rim, to reach things at the bottom whereas I can't manage to reach down to bottom drawers of an upright freezer.

I returned from the laundry room & the freezer with a huge piece of sea trout. This is a fish we only discovered a few years ago & love it. I cut the fillet in half & returned one piece to the freezer - 1.3kg of filleted fish is a bit much for just the two of us. For those who don't know sea trout has some of the delicacy of trout whilst retaining the richness of salmon. Delicious. That's going to be baked in a foil parcel along with a bit of white wine. I'm looking forward to it already.