• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

PAN-FRIED TROUT WITH LEMON AND HERB STUFFING

serves 2 • TIME: 20 minutes

Being from the Atlantic coast, we’re all about our fish, but we don’t leave our love behind when we travel upstate to visit friends in Asheville, North Carolina, or Emerts Cove, Tennessee, or anywhere in casting distance of the rivers of the southern Appalachian mountains, really. We’re crazy for the varieties of freshwater trout—like rainbow, brook, and brown trout—we find there. Whether the fish are wild or farmed, a delicate, flaky flesh and a lightly aquatic, slightly nutty flavor are the hallmarks of a good trout. These perfectly sized fish take best to simple techniques (see also Smoked Trout).

In this recipe, the stuffing we make for the trout is actually a bread salad, similar to a cornbread salad you might make with leftover cornbread—except here we use easy-to-find white bread, and we cut everything up fine so it hugs the fish on every forkful.

2 tablespoons sifted all-purpose flour

1¼ teaspoons kosher salt

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 rainbow, brook, or brown trout fillets (about 6 ounces each)

4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter

1 large lemon, segmented (see Segmenting Citrus)

2 slices white or whole wheat bread, toasted, crusts cut off, cut into fine dice

½ cup mixed fresh herbs such as dill, parsley, and mint

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon white vinegar

1 In a small bowl mix together the flour, salt, and pepper. Sprinkle the mixture over both sides of the trout fillets until they’re evenly coated.

2 Melt the butter in a medium cast-iron skillet over medium heat until the froth begins to subside. Place the fillets in the skillet, skin side down, and cook until the skin is alluringly browned (you’ll be able to see the edge of the fillet browning), about 5 minutes. Turn the fillets over and cook with the flesh side down for about 3 minutes.

3 While the fillets are cooking, toss the lemon segments, diced toast, and herbs in a bowl. Dress with the olive oil and the vinegar, and reserve.

4 Place a dollop of the lemon-herb mixture on each plate, lay a fillet, skin side up, over it, and serve immediately.

CRISPY-SKIN SALMON WITH BUTTERMILK-MINT SAUCE

serves 4 • TIME: 20 minutes

We ate a ton of salmon as kids—our parents loved to poach bone-in cross-cut steaks in white wine and lemon juice. And though we developed a keen taste for the fish, the gummy skin (easy enough to pull off) is not very appetizing, even to look at, and we lived in fear of swallowing a needle-sharp bone.

And then we ate fried salmon skin in Charleston, at Sushi Hiro on King Street, and what a deliciously salty-crispy treat that was! In this recipe, we broil a large, generously seasoned piece of boneless salmon fillet skin side up so it gets blistery and delicious. The buttermilk-mint sauce, slightly tangy and cool, is there to temper the rich salmon and to give it a simple, fresh, southern flavor.

½ cup chopped fresh mint (leaves from about 8 sprigs)

½ cup whole or lowfat buttermilk

½ cup sour cream

1 teaspoon kosher salt

3 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 pound skin-on salmon fillet

⅛ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 Combine the mint, buttermilk, sour cream, and ½ teaspoon of the salt in a food processor or blender, and process until thoroughly combined. Transfer the sauce to a bowl and reserve.

2 Pour 2 teaspoons of the oil into a large cast-iron skillet or broiler pan, and position it underneath the broiler so the bottom of the pan is about 5 inches from the heat source. Turn the broiler on.

3 As the broiler and the pan heat up, score the salmon skin crosswise in three places, to roughly portion the fish into 4 pieces. Massage the remaining teaspoon of oil over the skin of the fish, and sprinkle it with the remaining ½ teaspoon salt and the black pepper.

4 When the oil in the skillet is smoking, lay the fillet, skin side up, in the pan and cook for 5½ minutes, or until the skin is blistery and charring