Steelhead Trout Season

We found this recipe that called for baking a whole trout with tomatoes and potatoes, and have been waiting for a chance to try it. Fresh, wild caught, steelhead trout is now available in our markets, and we jumped at the chance. As we are wont to, we took our own path and substituted fillets for the whole fish (no pesky bones to deal with).

Whole Baked Trout with Cherry Tomatoes and Potatoes
Source: “Martha Stewart Living”, May 2014
Active time: 15 minutes
Total time: 1 hour
Serves: 4

2 Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed and thinly sliced
12 oz. cherry tomatoes, broken into smaller clusters if on the vine
1 clove garlic, smashed
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh oregano
1 Tbsp. plus 1 tsp.  olive oil
1 tsp. coarse salt
Freshly ground pepper
2 whole trout (about 9 oz each,) scaled, gutted, and cleaned
6 thin lemon slices (from 1 lemon)

Preheat oven to 425’.  Toss together potatoes, tomatoes, garlic, oregano, 1 Tbsp. oil, and ½ tsp. salt.  Season with pepper.  Arrange potatoes in a 9 x 13 baking dish, overlapping, them; top with tomatoes.

Roast until tomatoes are juicy and potatoes are tender, about 25 minutes.  Remove from oven.  Rub fish with remaining 1 teaspoon oil, dividing evenly.  Season inside and outside of fish with remaining ½ tsp. salt; stuff with lemon slices.  Arrange on top of potatoes, shifting tomatoes alongside. 
Roast until fish are cooked through, about 20 minutes; serve immediately.

Steelhead trout, nestled on a bed of roasted potatoes,  ready for the oven

Twenty minutes later - out of the oven. A one pot wonder!

Meg found the baby squashes at Costco and couldn’t resist how cute they were. (We are probably lucky to be eating them, she was that enamored). We steamed them and drizzled them with butter and lemon. Yum!

Baby vegetables. Those zucchinis are about finger size!

A bottle of  2011 Spanish Tempranillo by Tapena followed Meg home from Raley’s one day. By buying six or more bottles (and who wouldn’t take a deal like that?) it was only $7.19. The label mentioned that it went well with salmon, so we thought it was a good choice for the steelhead trout. It was.

2011 Spanish Tempranillo by Tapena 

Strawberries also followed Meg home from Costco. They are so picture perfect and luscious looking that we decided to simply eat them.

Oh all right, they are adorned with orange or lemon or ginger flavored turbinado sugar. And at the last moment, Meg opened a bottle of Red Chocolate Decadence wine.  We can only be so simple.

Our unsolicited and biased opinions:

The recipe called for a clove of garlic smashed, but we grated a very large clove and left it in the olive oil for a couple of hours. We used grape tomatoes instead of cherry tomatoes on the vine. Rather than add the tomatoes with the potatoes for the total cooking time, we chose to add them for the last twenty minutes with the fish. Because we did not use whole fish, we put lemon slices both under and on top of the fish.

We loved this dish!  It can easily work as a week night meal or company dinner. Steelhead trout is similar to salmon in taste and texture. Buy what is fresh and adjust your baking time accordingly.

The strawberries were truly delicious on their own. Meg’s whim of making the dipping sugars turned out to be a really good idea. The crunch of the sugar crystals contrasted nicely with the juicy strawberries. The ginger sugar surprised Sue and was both of our favorites. Orange was a close second, though.

Each sugar combination was made with a quarter cup of turbinado sugar and a heaping half teaspoon of zest and/or fresh grated ginger.  There was lots of sugar left over for further dipping or baking.

Welcome summer and all its bounty!