SPRINGTIME TROUT RECIPES

As winter melts into spring, the streams run cold and fresh. Time for trout!

"Lake St. John" by Winslow Homer, 1897

We present here a pair of trout recipes from our archives, one appetizer and one entree. And no, you don't need to catch your own.

SMOKED TROUT SPREAD W/ HORSERADISH

Whenever I codify a recipe, I research extensively and explore the differences and the common denominators among the various versions. In doing so, I found that the multitude of smoked trout spread recipes generally fall within two categories– those based on cream cheese, and those not.

I veered away from the cream cheese versions for a couple of reasons. For one thing, I have developed through experience a sense that anything based on cream cheese automatically becomes flavored cream cheese, a homogeneous schmear perfect for one’s morning bagel... but not much else. Now, I love my Sunday morning toasted everything slathered with flavored cream cheese as much as the next guy (or should I say goy) but I wanted something more sophisticated… a pre-dinner amuse-bouche better paired with Champagne than with your morning coffee… something suitable for, say, high tea with the royals.

The other reason I’m cream cheese-averse? I once worked for an alleged chef at a major hospitality destination who used cream cheese in his kitchen like an auto mechanic uses WD-40– as a quick fix for just about any problem he encountered. Me? I strive to keep everything real– and if I come up with a hack, I’ll happily identify it as such.

So, having settled on a mayonnaise-sour cream base, I narrowed down and tinkered with a set of ingredients and techniques that would please the mouth from multiple directions, presenting a balance of lively flavors and pleasing textures. Furthermore, it had to be moist but not runny, capable of holding together on a cucumber slice.

Here’s what I came up with–

This mixture held together beautifully– no runs or drips.

INGREDIENTS:

¾ cup Mayonnaise

½ cup Sour Cream

1 Shallot, Finely Minced

½ - ⅔ Cup Finely Diced Celery (We love that “micro-crunch!”)

1 Medium-sized High-Quality Dill Pickle, Finely Diced

2 Tablespoons Prepared Horseradish

Mix well all the above, then add the flesh from (2) ¼ lb. Smoked Trout Fillets, chopped into pieces just small enough to mingle nicely with the other ingredients while remaining the most prominent textural component. Now, you can catch your own trout and smoke it; OR you can buy fresh trout fillets and smoke them yourself… OR you can buy boneless smoked trout, like this–

Ducktrap is a line of high-quality smoked seafood products.

At first the final mixture for this recipe might seem too “wet,” but give the trout meat a little time to absorb some of the excess moisture and it should be fine. Serve on cucumbers (as shown) or crustl-ess toast, or even in endive leaves. It can also be presented as a dip with celery sticks.

If you’re pairing this with bubbly (which I think a perfectly wonderful idea!) opt for lighter, crisper versions. Please consider aiming a little higher than Italian Prosecco and a little lower than French Champagne itself– American-made Blanc de Blancs from Schramsberg, Gruet, and others are exponentially more complex than Prosecco and yet much better values than their fancy French cousins.

And if you’ve caught your own trout right here in the Finger Lakes region and smoked it yourself, then you are perfectly positioned to practice what I call “regional affinity,” i.e., pairing wine and food from the same region. That’s because many of the wineries that rim the trout-rich lakes Cayuga, Seneca, Keuka, and Canandaigua bottle high quality, Champagne-style sparkling wines… more-than-worthy successors to the giant “champagne” producers that were once the bedrock of the Finger Lakes wine industry.

Heart & Hands 2015 Blanc de Blanc-- on of the finest bubblies EVER from the Finger Lakes region.

And finally, if bubbly isn’t your thing, consider pairing this smoked trout & horseradish spread with a dry Gewürztraminer– an often misunderstood variety that nonetheless yields deliciously complex, full-bodied whites spunky enough to stand up to hardwood smoke. I previously posited in The Royal Sisterhood that white wine varieties can be correlated to types of women; if so, then Gewürztraminer is a fearless, freckle-faced redhead who can beat up your brother. See GEWÜRZTRAMINER! (A Love Story) for more on that.

On to the main course--

TROUT FILLETS WITH ALMONDS

Or Trout Almondine… or Almandine… or Amandine... whatever we call it, boneless rainbow trout and almonds make a really great combination. It shows up in cookbooks and on menus everywhere, with multiple spellings. Jacques Pepin sticks to consistent French with his “Truite Amandine,” which he translates to perfect English as simply “Trout with Almonds.” (Recipe unavailable for redistribution; you need to get your hands on the actual book– See Jacques Pepin: New Complete Techniques: Revised Edition of the Classic Work.) Most recipes for this dish are linguistic mongrels, e.g., Martha Stewart’s TROUT ALMANDINE. One commonly sees “Trout Amandine,” an allowable mix of English and French, I think, so long as the foreign word is italicized.

What they all have in common is trout and almonds… and, unfortunately, flour. In keeping with modern culinary sensibilities, we’ve attempted a version WITHOUT flour. But first, a little background.

Among the Ivy-educated, ruling-class/trust-fund elite, the trout enjoys more positive cachet than, say, its freshwater brethren like bass or perch. The very word “trout” conjures imagery of babbling New England brooks and tweedy old fly fishermen. Winslow Homer (1836-1910), he of the watercolor at the head of this essay, is famous for his depictions of trout fishermen with fly rods, not of rednecks reeling in catfish between beers. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

And among the various species of fish we call trout (see HERE for some details) it is the RAINBOW Trout that commands the most attention.

What a great name… who among us, after all, doesn’t love rainbows? (Click HERE for an early and especially beautiful, instrument-only take on the Rolling Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow”-- essentially a duet with Stones founder Brian Jones on the horn-like mellotron and rock-n-roll piano god Nicky Hopkins on the ivories.) And “rainbow” is a legit piscatorial name, not one of those faux fish-marketing monikers like “Chilean Sea Bass” for what is actually “Patagonian Toothfish.” Rainbow trout, you see, really do sport rainbows, kind of–

Rainbow trout also lend themselves to fish farming better than nearly all other fish. Aquaculture affords control over product size, and small freshwater fish can be raised to exact proportions. One of the greatest contributions to culinary technology was the invention of the trout de-boning machine. (My patent search located an application in the mid-1990’s, but I recall serving completely boneless trout at least a decade earlier.) Thus processed, boneless rainbow fillets cook quickly and easily. And that, along with their catchy name, makes them perfect for restaurants.

Which brings us back to “Trout with Almonds” by that or any other name. First, the trout itself–

Commercially available trout fillets come boned with either the head on or the head removed. Unless you like to eat trout heads, you probably shouldn’t buy them. (To be fair, the head-on version makes for a traditional presentation when serving both sides of a fish and also looks better in stuffed trout recipes.) This producer’s website spells out the typical purchasing options. A pair of their 5 or 6 oz. fillets would make a perfect dinner portion.

(NOTE: Rainbow trout is not naturally pink-fleshed. If you see some that is, that means that it has been fed color-producing food at the farm. This just in from a higher-up industry insider in response to my inquiry– “Regarding the color, yes, our supplier uses an all natural colorant added to the feed. They use Astaxanthan, an antioxidant which is derived from Phafia Yeast. After eating this for a few weeks the flesh will begin to take on a reddish hue. This does not affect flavor, it is only for aesthetic purposes.”)

And now for the almonds–

Almonds come in several forms. From vertical bins in the bulk foods section I bought a small bag each of blanched slivered almonds and a similar portion of sliced almonds. By (very) briefly grinding these together (ONE quick pulse, maybe two) I achieved a pleasing appearance and texture, better than if I had used all of one or the other. For complexity of flavor I added a dash of high-quality granulated garlic (NOT mere garlic powder.)

In the absence of the usual flour dusting that produces a crust, we need to get the almonds to firmly adhere to the trout… yet another use for the wonderful egg, perhaps the most versatile ingredient in the world. I blended two eggs and poured them into a pyrex baking dish, which was perfectly proportioned for coating the filets. After the egg bath, I firmly pressed the trout (flesh side only) into the chopped almond mixture that I had scattered on an oval plate.

Most Trout w/ Almonds recipes call for the sauté pan, while a few are baked. I like to do both– I seared the almond sides until the almonds turned a lovely golden brown, and then gave the skin a brief sear before transferring them to the baking dish I just cleaned and dried after the egg bath. This visits a 350º oven for no more than five minutes.

I figured that an elegant sauce was in order, so before doing all this I made Lemon Beurre Blanc, a fabulous accompaniment for nearly everything that swims. Here is an adaptation of the recipe I posted in my earlier piece about oysters–

Sauce Beurre Blanc ("white butter sauce") is a classic French sauce for seafood. It also works especially well with asparagus as a lighter but equally decadent alternative to hollandaise. Like hollandaise, it breaks easily and is therefore difficult to hold at an acceptable serving temperature. But unlike hollandaise, beurre blanc can benefit from a simple kitchen hack— adding the butter to a base of reduced cream. (A lot of fancy restaurants do this without telling you.) When you google “beurre blanc,” you’ll see recipes with and without cream. Click accordingly. To summarize them, you cook the minced shallot in a bit of butter and then add the wine, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Cook it down until most of the liquid has evaporated, then add the cream. It will bubble and reduce; when it thickens significantly, whisk in the butter and add salt and pepper to taste.

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For a final embellishment I browned some of the sliced almonds in butter, dried them, and sprinkled them atop the sauce. This dish is a great showcase for white wine, and dry Riesling is my personal favorite here. If you insist on Chardonnay, consider keeping it French– a ripe and oaky Californian Chardonnay will overwhelm this dish. It is hard to go wrong with Sauvignon Blanc from anywhere... it is rather foolproof with any seafood.