My cavegal came out with lunch, I eat it pulled apart and with my fingers, I find it so much easier to feel the bones and get them out before that tender, flavourful moist bite of fishy heaven enters my mouth.
Lately it seems that when I see a post on baked fish, its a fillet done with spices, done on a pan or with a bread crust.. nothing wrong with that but to me that is not baked fish..
A true baked fish is a memory from my childhood, whole fish, cleaned as in gutted and scaled but otherwise whole, give it a good salting/seasoning on the outside, lightly on the inside.. I like to put a sliced onion on the inside, and I put another small onion on the outside along with two big celery stalks, then put in foil and wrap up and fold over the top and bake in oven or on or in coals for about 30 to 40 min till its fall apart tender, save the juice for the best fish stock!
Simple, but o my god so good! yes, you can pull the peices off in parts, remember to take the skin off, if you don’t like it. and then it will mostly be deboned but yes, you will still have to take your tiny bones.. its worth it!
Just another Day on the Farm 
Is that a trout you’ve got there on your plate? It looks really yummy, and you are SO right about this one. You instantly transporting me back to a red sand beach on Prince Edward Island…
That day, we’d bought a mackerel right off the boat and the fishermen told us the best way to cook it was foil-wrapped whole in the coals of a beach fire. I was dreading it (’cause a friend of mine liked to make canned mackerel sandwiches and they smelled gut-turning gross) but, I’m telling you, that was the best tasting fish I’d ever had. It was smoky and rich – just browned at the edges and absolutely swimming in broth (thanks Dad; ) and OMG, with nothing added but salt and pepper, what awesome flavours.
Thanks so much for this… It was so long ago but I can still taste it like it was yesterday!!
I remember Lake Ontario Smelt, gutted and pan fried in butter whole or east coast, cold river trout cooked the same way. The bones just peeled out when you lifted away the spine and the flesh easily came away from the skin……..mmmmm
Now this cooking way is very similar to stuff that we did as a kid after fishing as well. Jamie Oliver did a show on a very similar way, he stuffed the fish and put stuff on top as well as below, my fav way to cook fish now.
Thanks for the memory