I first boarded a London Shell Co boat many years ago. Then, very early into the floating restaurant/bar’s conception, it was an informal and slapdash affair, but a well-conceived and a fun one. Oysters and natural wine fuelled a slow and steady journey from Little Venice in north-west London towards Camden.
On that first voyage, there was one boat and it was small, with a single communal table: it was a supper club on a vessel, and everyone, each under blankets, slurped oysters while sailing down a moonlit canal.
Today, some things have changed but some are still the same. Seafood, particularly shellfish, remains the star; lesser-known varieties of wine, often organic, even bio-dynamic, are championed. But the business has grown with the boats: The Prince Regent is the second iteration of the first concept, a tasting menu with a wine pairing on a barge that floats along London’s winding waterways; there is also now the moored, larger Grand Duchess on which an à la carte menu is served.
Not long ago, I visited the Grand Duchess, static and close to King’s Cross station. Almost a decade on and The London Shell Co is an altogether more polished experience but doesn’t suffer for it – the conviviality and excitement of pirate-like dining remains.
Monkfish goujons precede pickled crab with streaks of winding, pickled fennel; Cornish cod arrives under a blanket of plucky salsa verde and ray wing tumbles from its wiry bones into peppercorn sauce.
These dishes are the work of the Italian chef Fede Pollame (ex-Pierre Koffmann and Marco Pierre White). His food also features on the moving boat, in its £65 tasting menu, designed to begin and conclude as per the barge’s journey time. You’d think cooking is hard enough anyway, but in a real galley of a kitchen the cogs are delicately oiled and the food enrapturing.
It is there you will find this dish, a trout sausage roll. A lesser salmon en croute, is it? No, it is better, because trout is much more enlivening and also more sustainable. Give this a try, dip it in mustard, and welcome autumn.
TROUT SAUSAGE ROLL
For 2 large sausage rolls
INGREDIENTS:
500g trout (cut into 2cm dice)
500g trimmed white fish (cod, hake, pollock, cut into 1cm dice)
250g vegan suet
3 heads roasted garlic (squeezed out)
15g black pepper (freshly ground)
20g fennel seeds (coarsely ground)
Pinch of salt
Roll of all-butter puff pastry
An egg yolk
METHOD:
Start by blending the trout in a food processor. Add the white fish trim, the garlic, pepper, fennel and salt and blend again until you make a sausage meat-like paste.
In a bowl, fold the suet through the sausage mix. Place into a piping bag.
Pipe a line of sausage meat along the pastry and brush half the egg yolk along the bottom side. Then fold the pastry over and press with a fork along the line to seal.
Glaze with egg yolk and leave in the fridge for half an hour to chill.
Bake at 220C for 14 minutes, turning halfway. Allow to cool for 15 minutes.
Cut in half and serve.
