My Fishy, My Whole Fishy

My blog is a bit behind the times, considering I'm going to talk about my dinner from a whole week ago. But, school takes up a lot of time. Last Saturday, I bought myself a whole rainbow trout for dinner because I like to eat whole animals, so I quite like to cook myself a whole fish. I tried to make one once before, and I think I overcooked it a bit and didn't quite make the most of it. This time, I looked around a bit to find a recipe, not so I could follow it, but so I could get a good cooking time and method. I think I did a pretty decent job, so I'll tell you what I did and show you what a real fish with a head and tail looks like.

I decided to go with a baking method. So, I preheated my oven to 400 degrees F.

I seasoned the inside of the fish with salt and pepper (or actually I should have but I almost forgot until the fish was stuffed so I sprinkled some on then). I stuffed the fish with thin slices of lemon, a handful of chopped flat leaf parsley, one or two chopped green onions and some capers.

Then I put the fish on an oiled baking sheet. Here's the fishy before he went in the oven:
I baked the fish for 20 minutes at 400 F. It came out pretty nicely cooked, at least it wasn't dry and overcooked. The fish flaked nicely and went well with the tartness of lemon juice I squeezed on it. The sea-like briny capers really complement fish, although I guess this is a freshwater fish (maybe it's not right for it to be briny). There were some presentation problems, though. I guess I didn't use enough oil on the pan because the fish skin stuck a little, not that that's a huge problem when I'm serving myself. But, it could be embarrassing when serving guests. If you want to be sure your fish won't stick, oil generously.

The cooked fish found his way to my plate and looked different and more eatable than the raw fish:
I had a great time tearing the fish apart getting out the good edible parts while removing the head, tail, bones, and skin. I really like the way fish flakes. I think it makes it more fun to eat than meat, sometimes. Is that a weird thing to say? Does anyone else think eating fish is fun?