Baking – reheat roast potatoes

It's common for a few bones to be left behind, so you should always check over the fish before cooking. I use a pair of small pliers to pull out any leftovers. It shouldn't take an hour to clean, though. Any leftover scales should come off with a quick rinse. If the fillet was supposed to be de-boned and scaled, and there were a lot of bones left and scales still attached, that's a bit of a problem.

Did the fish itself smell bad, or was it just the store that had an odor? Did the store just smell a bit "fishy", or did it smell like an environmental disaster? If you're not used to working with fish, you may be a bit sensitive to the smell. Once you get the fish home, you should not smell any off-odors on the fillets.

If you weren't impressed, I would just try to find another place and see if you like it better. It's not a bad thing to have high expectations, and you should find a fishmonger that you're happy with.

Yes, fast chilling is critical because it minimizes the production of new bacteria and potentially deadly toxins from the spores of anaerobic pathogens such as C. botulinum and C. perfringens. The spores are not killed by the low temperatures usual in sous vide, and the oxygen-free environment of the bag brings them back to activity. But they require time and temperature to become active and dangerous, so fast chilling -- either refrigeration or freezing -- and limiting the refrigeration time (to about 5 days at around 5°C/40°F, longer for lower temperatures) are absolutely critical to deter them.

The question starts with a situation that is different: cooking in an oven, which is not an anaerobic environment and thus does not trigger the same activation of the spores' lifecycles as cooking in a vacuum does.