I was very fortunate to be the recipient of some lake trout (truite saumonée).

High-quality protein is always good, but when someone actually catches the fish and then delivers a cleaned fillet in pristine condition, it stops being ”good” and becomes “don’t screw up” because opportunities to play with such rarities are few and far between. It has been a while since I last had lake trout (like oh, 2+ decades) and its very delicate flavor and texture obviates a lot of cooking techniques and stongly-flavored ingredients.

Low temperature poaching in oil was a possibility, but temperatures were pushing 30 and I didn’t need to add to that by turning on an oven for the better part of an hour. Steam oven? Yeah! Oh wait – I don’t have one (boo…). Okay – back to multi-step preparations.

I actually developed this recipe as an offshoot of some fish discussions with my pal Amy, and while I never posted my interpretation of her recipe ideas, I did do some stuff with the arctic char I broke down for that development (see here, here and here).

Trout and char are both delicately-flavored salmonids so a little finessing of my omble chevalier dish begat the following:

Ingredients

• Trout fillet (preferably a lake trout or salmon trout for the size and special taste)
• mixed mushrooms (I had shiitake, shimeji and king oyster)
• new potatoes (grelots); approximately 3 per serving
• dashi (I was using shellfish dashi that I had made previously; standard katsuodashi would work very well too)
• small knob of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced thinly
• sweet white onion cut into brunoise for garnish (approximately 1 tablespoon)
• orange bell pepper, but into brunoise for garnish (approximately 1 tablespoon)

Preparation

Skin the fish and trim the fillet into an appropriate portion size (approximately 100-125 g). Salt and pepper both sides of the fillets and then carefully pan-roast in beurre noisette until just past medium. Remove from pan and tent with foil; fish will continue to cook while it rests.

Steam potatoes until tender.

Heat dashi until simmering, and add ginger slices. Allow to infuse for several minutes, then add mushrooms. Slowly poach mushrooms until just cooked. Adjust dashi broth for seasoning with salt, pepper and soy sauce (Japanese or Taiwanese for flavor profile and color).

Service

Cut the new potatoes in half on the bias and plate cut side down. Remove mushrooms from dashi and plate over the potato. Strew the onion and bell pepper brunoise around the potato and mushrooms. Blot the fish to remove excess oil and discharge. Top the potato and mushrooms with the fish. Strain the dashi and spoon the dashi over the fish.

Serve with a mid-weight Pinot Noir (I had a 2007 Oak Bay Family Reserve Pinot Noir from the Okanagan), a lighter Chardonnay that isn’t overly oaked, or a Tokaji .

Notes

And there you have it: la truite saumonée avec les champignons asiatiques, grelots et le dashi parfumé au gingembre (lake trout with mushrooms, new potato and ginger-scented dashi). Thanks Emmanuel!

As an unrelated aside, making this dish today is one prime example of why LED lighting and induction cooktops are the only way to go when designing any kitchen (new or reno). 28ºC with a humidex pushing things into the mid-30s and having to work with a stovetop that throws heat really made it a bit of a challenge.

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