Trout Carbonara

Trout Carbonara

2 cups trout all bones removed
12 ounces fresh spaghettine or fettuccine
¼ cup fine dice onion
1-2 large cloves garlic, fine sliced
1½ tablespoons tomato paste
¼ cup white wine
olive oil
salt and pepper
1 or 2 egg yokes per serving

So now I have cold leftover trout. What to do with it? Having a yen for pasta I decided to do a rift on pasta carbonara. I got some fresh spaghettini (fettuccine would also work).

Get a large pot of water boiling, salt well. Since we are dealing with fresh pasta (2-3 minutes cooking) be sure the water is at a hard boil before starting to build the sauce.

Remove the skin and bones from the cold trout and break into small pieces. Watch out for all those little pin bones. Dice the onion and slice the garlic very thin.

In a large sauté pan, heat a 1-2 tablespoons oil and sauté the onion and garlic. Don’t burn it. A little salt now helps to get the onions sweating. Add the tomato paste and brown it a bit. We are looking for a very light tomato flavor here.

Add the trout and heat through. Add white wine and reduce.

Now separate the eggs. Discard the whites (or save for something else). Don’t break the yokes and if you are cooking for more than one, put each egg yoke (or two) in a separate small bowl.

Now start the pasta. Don’t over cook; you will finish it in the sauce. When the pasta is done, remove with tongs directly to the sauce and mix and let finish. Add more cooking water to keep moist, but not sloppy -- like a salad dressing.

For serving arrange the pasta and trout in a bowl, make a slight depression in the center for the egg yokes. Now slide the raw egg yokes onto the pasta keeping them whole.

Give it a good grind of very course black pepper and a sprinkle of finishing salt.

Dig in! Unlike a traditional carbonara, there is no cream and no cheese. Not that you couldn’t do that, but dairy and fish is generally not kosher for Italian. The egg yokes are broken and mixed in to create a silky rich sauce. It made my dinner.

It Really Works #1 - Grilling Fish

I was in Costco the other day buying this and that and walked by the fish area and saw packages of trout that had just been put out, i.e. hadn’t been sitting in the cooler for 6 days. They looked pretty fresh. Four large trout are a lot for one person to eat, but Lois is traveling this week, so I am on my own; it’s meat (or fish) pig-out time!

I decided to grill the trout. Now I have usually been reluctant to grill fish directly on the grill, especially delicate fish like salmon or trout. It’s too easy for it all to stick to the grill and have a real mess. All the books say clean the grill and then lightly oil it to prevent sticking but that doesn’t seem to work that well.

A few weeks ago I was watching “America’s Test Kitchen” and saw this tip on how to properly prepare a grill for cooking fish:

1. Heat the grill to the max – really burn off all that crud left from the last time you did that steak or chicken. I mean torch the sucker! Till its just turned to white ash.
2. Now scrub it good and hard with a wire brush until it is completely clean.
3. Oil it. Not once, but 7, 8 or 10 times. Get a bowl of vegetable oil (don’t waste that good olive oil unless that’s all you have), a couple of paper towels bunched up and your tongs. Rub on the oil, do it again, and again, and again.

The secret is that just doing it once doesn’t really build up a layer of polymerized oil. But doing it several times does. Now you are ready to grill.

For my trout I just first rinsed the trout. Then dried it completely. Any meat or fish should be completely dry for best browning. Brushed with olive oil and liberally sprinkled with salt, pepper, and garlic power. Don’t forget to season the insides.

Now lay the fish on the well seasoned grill and don’t disturb for 3-5 minuters. The fish should easily be flipped over for another 3-5 minutes and you are done. Crisply skin and no sticking.

It Really Works!