This is one of those musings on what to do with what I've got in the fridge - and this time it's not a really obvious pairing - smoked trout and carrots.
My fridge does not contain a lot of options at the moment, and the shops are closed tomorrow - one of the only two days in the year that they are - Good Friday (the other is Christmas Day) - so for tomorrow's dinner I'm going to have to make do with what is in the fridge. No sneaking out to Coles, when I've found the perfect recipe, which I now realise, as I write that, rules out a couple of recipes I was considering. Not that I have to find an actual recipe of course. I'm fasting today, so dreaming of tomorrow and food.
Smoked trout was my starting point - well it is Good Friday we are thinking about here - when you are supposed to eat fish. I also thought of the carrots because these are the only vegetables I have at the moment. Of course I have other options, there are other meats, and frozen vegetables, not to mention tinned ones, plus onions - there are always onions and potatoes as well. But yes it is Good Friday so smoked trout is as good a starting point as any - and why not carrots? Surely the sweetness of the carrots would be tempered by the smokiness and saltiness of the fish and you could always add something acidic - lemons, capers ...
Before I started searching the web for ideas, I had already ruled out a quiche - which would have been possible I think - because we have already had quiche this week. I also ruled out risotto - also possible but also a recent meal. Ditto for an omelette, and any other kind of tart. I'm not that fond of salads, and besides it's not that warm. I really don't think smoked trout suits a stir fry either. I did think about pasta, but decided that that is a bit of a cop out really, although then I thought maybe a ravioli might be the way to go. A smoked trout stuffing and a creamy carrot sauce? And this may well be the answer.
So what did the net have to offer? Well not a lot really, and interestingly the ones that immediately popped up were very fancy. The first was Carrots with smoked trout, mozzarella, wakame seaweed and beetroot emulsion from Michael Wignall on the Great British Chefs website, where it was described as 'challenging' and took 4 hours to make. Don't think so - and it doesn't look like much of a mouthful either. Plus a bit decadent for Good Friday don't you think?
Then a little while later I alighted on Smoked trout, Dutch carrots and butter sauce - from Shannon Debreceny on the Gourmet Traveller website. Somewhat more feasible except that my carrots are the big and cheap kind, not the elegant Dutch carrots. Besides you fry the smoked trout until the skin is crisp and David doesn't like the skin any which way, so that would be a bit of a waste.
Still with the Gourmet Traveller, but a different chef - Max Adey I found Smoked trout, carrot and quinoa salad with harissa dressing which I am only presenting to demonstrate the trendiness of the ingredients - quinoa and harissa in particular, neither of which I have any of. And besides harissa is far too hot for David. Plus, as I said, I don't like salads. Nevertheless I think I am just showing my own preferences here, as it would otherwise perhaps be a possible option. And there are others out there as well.
I began with posh and ended with posh - this time from a website called PeakD, where Fettuccine with salmon in a creamy sauce based on white wine and carrot sauce with smoked trout was presented by the author as "my entry for Steemit food challenge" followed by a whole lot of text - and pictures - describing the process in some of the weirdest English I have come across on the net. Besides I have no salmon.
In between those first posh, somewhat pretentious recipes I encountered other suggestions, mostly interestingly enough from either magazines or commercial companies of one kind or another. I say interestingly, because before I started on this post I had made a new resolution. In future when looking for recipes, I would check out the very first from an 'ordinary' blogger, no matter how unattractive it might be - with the intent of possibly looking into the blog itself, just a little bit.
However, today, it was ages and ages before I came across such a site, so even though I am already breaking the resolution, I am ignoring that thought for now. Mostly I think because when I did eventually find a couple such sites, I decided they deserved a little bit more than just a mention.
So back to my search, and in the order in which I found them: Smoked trout and marinated carrots on rye/Canadian Living (a Canadian magazine). Pretty and probably tasty but not really dinner is it? There were of course, lots and lots of other recipes for sandwiches, both enclosed and open, wraps and buns, as well as Asian ones wrapped in lettuce leaves.
Smoked trout rice bowl from Blue Apron which I think is a winery - probably in America - because they were recommending wines with that name to pair with the recipes they offered on their site. I'm not into rice bowls either. To me I guess it's just a cross between a deconstructed stir fry and a host of ingredients just piled on some rice. Undoubtedly healthy however. A bit bland.
I ignored the fish cakes and carrot fritters served with pieces of smoked trout on top. I also ignored the dips. Not that I saw one which combined my two ingredients. I do like fish cakes and indeed this could be a real option, but I just wasn't in the mood.
Shredded carrot fish pie seemed like an option, but when I started reading through the piece on the website Pure Ella I found there was no recipe, just a few pictures which didn't really show you how to put it together, and a long sales piece about somebody's saucepans. Besides it was for ordinary fish, not smoked fish - although, of course, you could substitute. However, there was Smoky fish pie with carrot mash from a website called Dairy Dairy which looked more promising. However, it's the same old David problem. He doesn't like mash, although he does like Shepherd's pie. Not logical. It is the reason however, that I have never ever made a fish pie with mash on top. Just pastry ones. Now that might be a thought - a pillow pie.
I then came across my own idea - Trout and ricotta carrot ravioli by Dr. Joanna McMillan on the Philips website. Well not quite my idea because the carrots were in the ravioli rather than the sauce. Not that there seems to be sauce, just some asparagus. Also it was a recipe designed for a pasta making machine from Philips and I don't have one of those. Good to see that ravioli are indeed a possibility however, and ricotta could be an addition. Oh no - the shops are closed. Parmesan perhaps and maybe even better. It was reassuring however, to see that the idea of ravioli was not so stupid.
Creamy smoked trout chowder now there's an idea. It was from one of those bloggers I spoke about earlier on - Kylie Perrotti who calls her website Tried and True, so I added her to my list of websites to pursue. Now her recipe did not include carrots, but the idea of a chowder was appealing and I got quite carried away with the idea, until I realised I have no milk - a vital ingredient - and the shops are closed. A petrol station?
I had almost given up when I thought to add 'guardian' to my search and guess what - Ottolenghi popped up with a red hot option - Hot smoked trout with pearl barley and sour cream. Honestly I really try to avoid Ottolenghi and his team as I feel that you must be fed up with him by now. However, the man seems to be infinitely innovative and interesting. At first I thought this was just another salad, but it isn't. It's even got carrots with the smoked trout. But alas it also features pearl barley which I don't think I have, but then again, maybe I do at the back of the cupboard. No sour cream though, and no celery or tarragon, and I do think that one shouldn't stray too far from the recipe for something here. No tarragon, celery or pearl barley would change it hugely.
It did remind me, however, - just because it was The Guardian - of Nigel Slater's smoked mackerel pie, which I have made twice now - once with mackerel and once with smoked trout. Both times acknowledged as delicious. The filling contains no vegetables however, which doesn't mean to say that it could.
I looked up Beverley Sutherland's long list of foods that could be paired with carrots, but smoked fish was not mentioned. Just fish. However, I am now determined to give it a go somehow. After all it's surely not that adventurous. The Guardian also turned up an article from another of their treasures - Jay Rayner who wrote about weird flavour pairings and why we should try them. Herewith three quotes from that article. I fear I am not as adventurous as him but deep inside I wish I was.
"the flavour combinations that we all recognise – lamb and mint, beef and horseradish, fish and lemon – are as much a matter of convention as anything else, a set of bedfellows which, through trial and error but absolutely no science, we have decided want to be together."
"a large part of me, the restless, greedy, incorrigible part, is hungry for different experiences, for the shock of the new, or at the very least, for the untried. The kind of thing no author of a flavour thesaurus would ever put in her book for fear of all the pointing and laughing."
"you can be damn sure that your average fearful eater, forever suspicious that the kitchen has set a collection of gustatory booby traps, would not be happy if you offered to put some Marmite with their fish. Me, I'm sure it would be a fabulous combination. Or at the very least I would want to find out. Because how sad would it be to have let some of the greatest food experiences pass you by simply out of squeamishness? You may not think strawberry yoghurt and sardines have much to say to each other, but I will not be happy until I've found out."
And of course, perhaps we now have a long history of cooking behind us, modern chefs, cooks and recipe developers are indeed trying out new flavour combinations that range from interesting to shockingly weird.
I suspect I'm your 'average fearful eater'. The most adventurous things I can think of to add to my ever so slightly unusual pairing of trout and carrot are capers, mustard and cream - pink peppercorns was one suggestion - but I don't have any of them, although I do have green ones. I'm not at all sure about cheese, but if the answer is indeed ravioli then there will be cheese, if only sprinkled on top. And I think orange would be better than lemon although I only have a mandarin.