Here fishy, fishy! (45 minute-baked whole trout with herbs with 3 sides ideas)

I tend to purchase my fish so that it does not resemble the animal. But the seasonal Idaho trout (fresh, not frozen), already gutted and cleaned from the farmer's market said "take me home" through its bitty pointed teeth. If you can get past the eyeballs and all, this makes a nice low maintenance weekday meal. The vendor suggested that some lemon slices and fresh herbs tucked into the fish would be an easy, healthy meal. Just place in a baking pan, wrapped up in parchment paper at 350 F for 30-35 minutes until the fish flakes easily.

Fresh dill and lime slices flavored my fish. After it was done baking, it got seasoned with salt and pepper to taste. Be careful of the bones...especially trout, such delicate little things.

So, I am not aware of how to serve a whole fish elegantly. (too lazy and hungry to find an instructional video) Some day soon I should make myself an artful dish.

First serving I ate with green beans with a bragg's amino, honey, garlic and olive oil marinade leftover from my london broil earlier in the week.

Second and third serving were eaten with some diced tomatoes that were cooked about 10 minutes with onions, fresh herbs, a bit of salt and sugar to taste and some pan steamed lemon-juice sesame seed chopped frisee.


The last serving, I ate with shredded butternut squash pancakes from Food Wishes' blog  and carrot top pesto (a dairy free concoction in a blender: carrot greens saving stems for another recipe as they are too woody to blend, 1/2 cup toasted pinenuts done at low 300F for 3 minutes in the toaster oven-easy to burn so watch them nuts!, 1/2 cup nutritional yeast, 1/4 cup olive oil and enough water to make pesto to desired thickness, add salt if desired to taste)

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With the bones, head and tail, I threw in a pot with some onion, carrot and kale stems and herbs to simmer for an hour in a small pot and made 3 cups worth of stock. I should have bundled it all in cheesecloth (which can be really hard to find if it's not near Thanksgiving. I better go stock up now since the only store very convenient to me that I could find it in closed down [Ralph's]) but I just used a mesh strainer for now. Later in the week, I made a corn-beet greens chowder with the trout broth with nutritional yeast and topped with cut up scallops. Added 1 tsp of cumin and 1/2 tsp of tumeric for flavor and cheery color.

The joys/challenges of cooking for 1...trying to keep something interesting when it makes 4 or more servings. Different sauces and the freezer are allies in these efforts.

Speaking of things that swim, my co-worker R recalled the days when Sea World had trainers in the shows in the water, being tossed up by the animals. He said but now the "big ol' fish" can't do anything like that. To which R squared replied, that is a  "lactating fish, brotha!" Gotta love biologists. What live entertainment show has changed/gone away that you miss?