Pan-fried Trout

I ate some trout last night. It wasn't quite like the other times when I've made trout - I had no lemon, for one thing. Can you believe that Arizona - a state in which citrus grows as freely as mushrooms in the Pacific Northwest - does not sell organic lemons? At least, not at Whole Foods, which (sadly) is the only "natural" market I can find around Scottsdale. And for another thing, no sage. NO SAGE. In the desert. The desert. Really, Phoenix? Really?

But what am I, if not up for a challenge, eh? What's herby and sage-shaped? Basil! OK, it's not completely sage shaped, and the leaves are very thin... and a completely different flavor, but I'll try it all the same. You never know. Plus, that means I don't have to buy an herb, since it's growing in my living room.

To replace lemon, my first thought was, naturally, lime or orange. Apparently none of those, either. I'm sorry, I'm not keen on cooking pesticides (and consequently supporting the practice of pouring toxic chemicals into the ecosystem and farm workers) into my already probably-poisonous aquatic-raised dinner. Just the basics, folks, thanks.

What is available here? Now? TOMATOES! And they're acidic... and brightly colored... and they can slice up as nice as any lemon. And they'll be pretty all cooked in a pan. Mmm, fried tomatoes.

It was all a grand experiment, really - you can stick whatever you want in your trout. My favorite is still sage and lemon, but I did quite enjoy the hotness of the tomatoes, the way they got very soft and cooked and sweetened... maybe if I get a chance, some day, I'll cook trout with lemon AND tomatoes. And sage.

By the way, have you ever tried frying sage leaves in butter or olive oil? No? Do it now.


PAN-FRIED TROUT

Flour
Sea salt
1-3 whole trout (however many you want to cook), gutted
Freshly ground black pepper
Bunch of fresh herb leaves - sage preferable, but you can experiment
Sliced tomato or lemon or orange
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp other cooking oil (I used coconut - sometimes I use 1-2 tsp sesame oil)

1. Combine some flour with salt and pepper on a large plate. Just a hefty pinch of salt, a few good grinds of pepper. Use your instincts. Rinse your very fresh trout, inside and out. It shouldn't be very slimy. If it is, it might be off. You can probably use it anyway, as long as you rinse off any slimy texture. Unless the smell makes you want to throw up, then it's most definitely not ok. Ideally, you should not really be able to smell the trout at all unless you put your nose quite close to it, and then it should be just a very small smell. Remember, buy trout from a well-chilled, busy fish market. A busy fish market almost always has the freshest fish.

Pat dry your trout with paper and put it on your flour plate.

2. In the meantime, put on a very large cast-iron or steel pan to heat up. Use the heat setting that provides a moderate amount of browning for butter. On most electric stoves, this is somewhere just shy of medium, as long as you let it preheat. On gas, it's probably higher.

3. Coat the fish well on both sides with the seasoned flour, and put some plain sea salt and pepper on the inside cavity. The inside won't be the direct recipient of hot pan bottom, so you don't want to put flour in there. It will just get gummy.



4. Cram some sliced up tomatoes/lemon/whatever in your trout cavity. If it's a small trout, like mine, you can cut your tomato slices in half to fit better, like I didn't. Stick the herbs in there too, next to the trout flesh. I put in a very small amount of fresh thyme with my basil, just to see what would happen.



Nothing noteworthy, as it turned out.

5. Add your oils/butter to the pan and swirl them around to mix. If your butter starts spitting and turning dark very quickly, your pan is way too hot. Take it off the heat and let it settle for a minute or so before putting it back on (at a lower heat). You can still add the trout, though, especially if you're using cast iron, since that stays hot a long time. Put some tomato/lemon slices around in the pan, and a few on top of the fish. And some herbs. Don't forget those.



6. Depending on the size of your trout, and the heat of your pan, you'll want to cook it on each side about 6 minutes, give or take. Take a peek inside the cavity to see if the flesh on the lower side is opaque. If it's translucent, leave it on until it becomes opaque. You can turn it over when it's white. I didn't wait quite long enough, so I had to turn it back over again, but fortunately trout is relatively forgiving.



7. When the second side is cooked, you have to do something about the back of the trout, which is quite thick and will not have had a chance to get close enough to the heat to cook through. I like to prop up the trout on the side of the pan, back-down, and cook about 3 minutes per side (prop on the other side after three minutes, in other words).



Don't be alarmed if parts are falling off your trout. This is good. If they look cooked (this goes for tomatoes in the pan, too), take them out. I think it looks tastier when it's falling apart and charred in parts.

And make sure the head gets sufficient heat to cook. Because you're going to eat it, or you don't deserve to be eating fish.

8. When the trout flakes easily, the skin wants to peel off, and it looks ready to eat, take it out and put it on a plate and admire it. Oh, I do love trout.



At this point, you can eat it. Pull the meat off the bones going with the grain, so you can leave the skeleton behind and not pick 8290348028340 pinbones out of your dinner. Be on the lookout though. But if you get one and crunch it up and accidentally eat it, that's probably ok. I've done it a fair number of times. Sometimes on purpose.

I'm not going to fib. My favorite parts of a trout are the eyes and brain. At least try them once, with an open mind. The trout is opening her mind to you, the least you could do is return the favor. If you don't think you can eat the head, don't even cook it. Just toss it to the cat.

If you're a glutton, have a very wee trout, or share a fish with someone else, what you're left with is this:



which you need to dispose of as soon as possible lest your pets get to it and drag it around the floor. If you have leftover meat, just refrigerate it and have it cold, or heated up, with some lemon butter or something. Put it on crackers with some interesting spread. Have a trout melt with swiss. Add it to your shrimp cocktail. Put it in chowder. Whatever you want.

The basil was alright. It didn't benefit from frying like sage does. In a bite with tomato, it was very good, as basil and tomato always are together. It didn't argue with the fish. But it didn't get chummy with it either. (Get it? chummy? salmonids? Yarr.) I'll stick with sage, if I can ever find it here. In the desert.

I really need to get used to living in Phoenix. I can't expect the same types of foods to be as readily available as they are in Seattle. Maybe for my next post I'll focus on something a little more Arizona. Saguaro pudding or something. Hey, that's a thought...