A Friday Fish Dish

From Rachael Ray’s kitchen: Trout with lemon & butter

Ingredients

4 tablespoons butter

2 skin-on trout fillets (6 to 8 oz. each)

Salt and pepper

4 sprigs thyme

2 small lemons, 1 thinly sliced and 1 juiced

1 tablespoon finely chopped flat-leaf parsley

Preparation

In a large (10- to 12-inch) cast-iron skillet, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Season the trout with 1/2 tsp. each salt and pepper. Place the trout, skin side down, in the skillet. Scatter with the thyme and lemon slices.

Cook the trout, spooning the butter from the bottom of the skillet over the fish often, until just cooked through (do not flip), about 5 minutes. Transfer the fish and lemon slices to a serving plate.

Remove the skillet from the heat and stir in the lemon juice, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Spoon the pan sauce over the fish. Top with the parsley. Always adjust the seasonings to suit your own taste.

The trout I bought was steelhead trout and came in two serving-sized pieces. Both had the skin on, so I took my time with one piece for the lemony-butter version. With the skin on, the fish should not cook too quickly and burn, but add a few drops of olive oil in the bottom of the pan to lubricate it. You can also brush that pan side of the trout with oil to keep it from sticking. It is quick and easy, and needs only a good veggie dish to go with it, and maybe a good, crusty bread from your local bakery shop. (Let’s support the independent people! They need love, too.)

The second recipe involves outdoor cooking on a grill, assuming you do go fishing and fix the finny fellow on the spot. I went to my local Ace Hardware to pick up pickling spice for corned beef and found that the “outdoor food on a grill” stuff was already in place and pawing the ground to get going. So I walked out of there with pickling spice, and several grill seasonings/rubs, one of which was for fish and fowl both. That’s what I took home, along with the other stuff, and I found that using this grilling rub as a base for seasoning the trout and (very carefully) letting it sit in the skillet and mushing the cooking liquid over it with a spatula, as if it were eggs being cooked sunny side up, does work nicely.  Being fresh, the trout took very little time to cook either way, and when added to a plate full of mixed potatoes and broccoli, along with a good crusty bread and some spreadable stuff is the way to go. And the price, per serving is worth it if you prefer good, healthy food over That Other Stuff.

As AW1Ed says, “Keep it simple, Sailor!” and it’s better.

Essentially, it’s the seasoning that can enhance the flavor or interfere with it, and the second choice, lightly using a fish/fowl prepared seasoning to enhance it, is up to you. Some people like to just cook the fish without adding anything.

Me? I’ll give everything a shot.  Lake perch vs. ocean perch on Fridays for supper…. Coated in cornmeal, salt and pepper, and pan-fried with roasted baby potatoes on the side and some green beans and cut veggies….mmm. And while we used to have  Sunday Dinner at night, Pop changed that to popcorn and soda because Ma changed Sunday Dinner to an after-church meal.

Category: Economy