When I returned from my trout fishing trip to Pyramid Lake in northern Nevada, I vowed to create dishes that would celebrate the two greatest foods that part of the world has to offer — Lahontan cutthroat trout and piñon pine nuts.
Both are major foods eaten by the Paiutes, who have lived on the east side of the Sierra Nevada since the last Ice Age. The Pyramid Lake Pauites traditionally originally favored a large type of sucker fish, the cui-ui, over the trout, but the sucker is endangered now, so now they eat trout. And in September, manyPaiutes still gather pine nuts for the winter and spring, just as they have for millennia.
Other groups of Paiutes focused on different foods. We know this because each band is named for its main food source: crayfish, salmon, desert parsley, marmot, wild onion, sage, hares, squirrels, cattails and pine nuts. I love this! For a cook, it’s like having an easy guidebook to making a Paiute-inspired dish.
Marmot, eh? Fresh out. But I do have wild onions, Nevada pine nuts and wild sage kicking around (Yes, I know my pantry is odd).
Nevada pine nuts. Yep. They are not what you buy in the store. They are far superior to every other pine nut in the world, except those from the Italian stone pine, which are about equal. Close to 90 percent of the pine nuts available in American stores are from China, and these are the ones that can give you “pine mouth,” which makes everything you eat taste metallic for days afterwards. You will never get pine mouth from American pine nuts; I buy mine from Penny at Goods from the Woods.
On to the recipes.
Lahontan trout are special. They are so large you actually treat them more like salmon than like “normal” trout, and while their meat is rich with fat, it is cream-colored, not bright red like a salmon or some trout — to get that color you need crayfish, and Pyramid Lake trout live almost entirely on other fish.
I wanted to use as much of these trout as I could, all the way down to the eggs. Fortunately, I scored a couple trout that were loaded with roe, so I made trout caviar. Isn’t Holly’s shot sexy?
I wound up with more than a pound of fresh caviar. I know, poor me, right? So trout eggs feature prominently in these recipes.
After filleting out the fish, I made a rich trout broth with the heads and bones (recipe is below). In went some wild onions and wild sage, plus some dried matsutake mushrooms — this is the mushroom I think goes best with fish. After a quick initial blanching to cook the fish, I drained them and picked off a lot of the meat, and especially the cheeks of the trout. I had plans for them.
Within a couple hours I was armed with a gallon of trout broth. First up: Trout Bisque, only instead of cream, I’d thicken the sauce with Nevada pine nuts. I initially thought I’d need cream anyway, but the dish came out so well I decided to skip it.
I did not skip a couple of heaping spoonfuls of trout caviar, though. I was inspired by a classic Southern she-crab soup, which relies on crab roe for its color and flavor. The trout roe did the same for my bisque.
Such a rich, lovely soup! Pale yellow and smooth, and full of flavor from the trout roe, trout broth and some of the trout meat I pulled off the bones and heads. A little sprig of chervil from the garden topped it off.
I used the rest of the trout broth as a base for a trout risotto, again with lots of trout eggs. On top of the risotto went a trout fillet breaded with a mixture of cornmeal and ground pine nuts. And on top of the trout went — you guessed it — more trout caviar.
Damn, this was a knockout of a dish! Like the bisque, it was essentially a trout threeway — fillet, caviar and broth. The best part is the juxtaposition you get from the briny pop of the caviar with the rich sweetness of the crunchy pine nut-cornmeal crust, all bowing down to the true star, which is the trout itself.
Trout and pine nuts aren’t the only wonderful foods native to the Great Basin. I am hoping to return to the Paiute Reservation throughout the year to gather yampa, wild onion, desert parsley and some of the wild seeds and herbs to spice them with. For those of you who live in this region, what wild plants to you eat? What should I look for next time I am in Eastern California, Nevada, Utah or Northern Arizona?
Trout with Pine Nuts
Ingredients
TROUT RISOTTO
- 2 tablespoons safflower oil or other neutral oil
- 3 tablespoons shallot, minced
- 2 cups risotto rice
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- 1 1/2 quarts fish or vegetable stock
- Salt
- 6 ounces cooked, flaked trout (optional)
- 3 tablespoons trout or salmon caviar (optional)
PINE NUT ENCRUSTED TROUT
- 2 pounds trout fillets
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup fine cornmeal
- 1/2 cup pine nuts
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 eggs, lightly beaten
- 1/4 cup safflower oil or other neutral oil
- Trout caviar for garnish (optional)
Instructions
- Put the pine nuts, salt and cornmeal into a food processor and buzz until combined. You want the pine nuts pulverized.
- Put the trout broth for the risotto into a pot and bring to a bare simmer.
- To make the risotto, heat the oil in a heavy pot and saute the shallots over medium-high heat until they turn translucent. Do not brown them. Add the rice and the dried thyme and stir well. Let this cook for 1-2 minutes, stirring often. Sprinkle salt over everything.
- Start adding the trout broth a little at a time. Start with 1 cup. Stir this in and let the rice absorb it, stirring almost constantly. It is the stirring that makes the risotto creamy. When the broth is almost absorbed, add more and repeat the process until the rice is still a little firm in the middle. Taste for salt. You may or may not need all the broth.
- Turn the heat to its lowest setting and let the risotto rest while you make the trout. Put the oil in a large saute pan and set it over medium-high heat.
- Set up a breading station for the trout. Dip the fish in the flour, shake off the excess, then dip the trout in the egg, and then the pine nut-cornmeal mixture. Fry until golden, about 4-5 minutes, depending on the thickness of the trout.
- To serve, turn the heat up on the risotto and add a little more broth. Stir to loosen the rice up, add the optional trout meat and trout caviar, then heat this through, about 2 minutes. Lay some risotto down in a shallow bowl or rimmed plate and top with a piece of fish. Garnish with trout caviar.
It looks like I’m the first to actually try this recipe and post about it afterward!
This took a long time to make (easily 3+ hours) but it was simply amazing. I didn’t have the roe (not in season), but we had fresh trout from an ice fishing trip today that made this incredible…I wouldn’t use anything but FRESH trout. (Fresh, as in they were swimming in the lake this morning, and swimming in a pot on my stove this evening.)
The pine nuts helped make this really, really creamy — I didn’t have to add any cream or milk to the batch.
I’ve never used a whole fish in this manner – I’ve always hated wasting so much of it in the past, but never again — I’ll be sure to follow your broth recipe from this day forth, just to make sure I can utilize the entire fish!
Thanks Hank! Excellent recipe. Holly’s photos definitely had me hooked when I found the website a couple of weeks ago.
I’ll be trying out some of your rabbit recipes next!
Beautiful photography, inspiring recipe.
I’m in Madrid and I’m not sure if they have trout at the local market, so I’m planning on trying out encrusted salmon filet over a scampi risotto. Any recommendations for further localizations?
Now that’s what I’ talking about! I was hoping for trout and pine nuts. You had to throw in the roe. I LOVE trout (and salmon) roe. I can’t get my family to try it, but maybe that is because its so freakin good I haven’t tried too hard.
I can’t wait to try this! Thanks much.
Hank: wonderful post and photos. I just recently have been using “bottarga”…I wonder how complicated it is to make your own from mullet roe…
BTW, I am a big fan and follower of your site. Looking forward to meeting you at BlogHerFood (I am a speaker too).
Will: No parasites in the roe. Yes, they live in the fish’s gut, but once the fish dies they migrate to the meat, not the roe.
Barton: It takes maybe an hour to make trout caviar from fresh roe. Really easy.
Michael: Yep. I like to use as much of an animal as I can. Thrifty Scotsman and all…
Carol: If you make the dish, report back and let me know how you like it!
Yosemite_Indian: I was hoping to hear from a Paiute! Very happy to hear you like the dish.
Hank. Seriously. You cook the most unbelievably delicious-looking food combinations I’ve ever seen. I come over to your blog just for the food porn, though you’ve managed to inspire me to try and cook a few dishes myself – like the corned venison which was great.
Great looking recipe. I am a Paiute and this looks very delicious. Thanks for creating such a great recipe from our traditional foods.
I gotta try it.
Oh, I love this! That trout roe photo is especially stunning….I started making trout broth (mediterranean style, with saffron and fennel and tomatoes, etc.) half a dozen years ago, after a successful fishing trip with my brother, and now it’s part of my standard repetoire. I’ll have to try your bisque recipe. Last year I caught some gravid rainbow trout and made trout caviar with your recipe. I ended up with only two tablespoons, and the eggs were quite small–it looked like a dollhouse version of your caviar (of which I am terribly jealous)–but it was so pretty, and very tasty. Great post!
Wow Holly! That photo of the roe dropping into the wine glass with a few jewels of roe outside the glass and at the bottom is a winning photo for sure! Great photograph!
Yes, SEXY photo of the caviar! It’s absolutely beautiful. Everything sounds delicious. This might be my favorite recipe on your site to date.
Very inspiring. Thanks for sharing!
Love that you used the cheek and head meat. I think too many fish heads wind up in the trash and you end up losing a lot of great meat and flavor.
Beautiful photos Holly!
Wow, sexy photo indeed! I too wonder about the prep involve in trout roe? Great concept with the pinenut thickened bisque.
The addition of the high fat pinenuts helps finish the soup sorta kinda like buerre blanc. Very smart, I have no doubt it was creamy. Having lived in New Mexico for a time I can’t argue, the chinnese pinenuts really aren’t worth eating. It’s like eating an unripe peach only makes you wish for the real thing.
Love your blog, Hank. Holly is a phenomenal photographer. Now to go get some trout!!!
I should have not have read this while on a conference call and 45 min to go until I can eat a crappy lunch sandwiched inbetween meeting.
This sounds delicious, and the photographs are stunning!
I have caught a few steelhead and landlocked salmon that were loaded with roe. I have never eaten the roe for the same reason I have never eaten raw freshwater fish- parasites. How is the roe prepared, or do you serve it fresh and what concerns do you have regarding parasites in uncooked freshwater fish?
Don’t get me wrong- I love fish roe and have always felt like we were ‘wasting’ beautiful roe when we used it as bait…