Rainbow trout - lovely name, lovely fish

"the trout is the perfect fish - exquisite in shape, delicate in colouring, seemingly dappled with sunlight. Its flavour makes its appearance on any table an occasion - a feast, not just a meal." Robert Carrier

I went to the market yesterday, and because I'm not there very often - well once a fortnight - and because their fish section is so wonderful I thought I would buy some fish for tonight's dinner. But what to buy - the choice is so overwhelming. In the end I thought I would buy a fresh whole rainbow trout - I'm not sure why - just because.

"Rainbow trout derive their name from their beautiful, multi-hued coloration. Their bodies are blue, green or yellowish, shading to silvery white on the underside, with a horizontal pink-red stripe running from the gills to the tail and black spots along their backs."

So one of the things that started me on this post (why is it called 'rainbow' trout?), has been answered. There are also brown trout and steelheads, but what I was sold was labelled rainbow trout.

There is so much romance associated with trout I think. Apart from big game fishing in the ocean it seems to me, as a completely ignorant person when it comes to fishing - that trout fishing, which you do with those amazingly elaborate flies - is the pinnacle of river fishing. There were a couple of television series completely dedicated to it a few years ago - well I suppose they were touristy travel kind of things, but they went to some pretty remote spots. Not your normal tourist beat. And when you see arty photos of people (almost always lone good-looking men) fly fishing you sort of understand the romance.

And here are just a few quotes about the romance of fly fishing. Sorry - I just couldn't resist including them all, and here seems to be the best spot.

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.” Cormac McCarthy, The Road

"She was charmed by the motions of trout. How they take their forms from the pressures of another world, the cold forge of water. Their drift, their mystery, the way they turn and let the current take them, take them, with passive grace. They turn again, tumbling like leaves, then straighten with mouths pointing upstream, to better sip a mayfly, to root up nymphs, to watch for the flash of a heron's bill. The current always trues them, like compass needles. When she watches them, she feels wise.” Matthew Neill Null, Allegheny Front

"To go fishing is the chance to wash one's soul with pure air, with the rush of the brook, or with the shimmer of sun on blue water. It brings meekness and inspiration from the decency of nature, charity toward tackle-makers, patience toward fish, a mockery of profits and egos, a quieting of hate, a rejoicing that you do not have to decide a darned thing until next week. And it is discipline in the equality of men - for all men are equal before fish." Herbert Hoover

"The traveler fancies he has seen the country. So he has, the outside of it at least; but the angler only sees the inside. The angler only is brought close, face to face with the flower and bird and insect life of the rich riverbanks, the only part of the landscape where the hand of man has never interfered." Charles Kingsley

"There he stands, draped in more equipment than a telephone lineman, trying to outwit an organism with a brain no bigger than a breadcrumb, and getting licked in the process." Paul O'Neil

And it does seem to be almost exclusively the domain of men. Solitary men. I imagine that even if you go for a fishing weekend with some mates, that whilst you are actually fishing you are alone - if you make a noise you disturb the fish. Hence all that philosophy about communing with nature and with God - yes there were quite a few quotes about God in the selection I found. I guess philosophy comes into a lot of sport - or it could - but trout - or fly fishing seems to particularly attract it. For, of course, fly fishing is not just for trout - salmon too and a whole lot of other fish whose names I do not know. And I'm sure there are some keen women fly fishers but you don't hear about them.

Then there's tickling trout.

This is a pub sign from England - the pub being called The Tickled Trout. Don't you love those English pub names? When we were kids travelling in the car we had a little notebook in which we wrote down all the names of the pubs we saw. I wonder what happened to it? Trout tickling though is rather more working man don't you think? Unless it's done by a noble savage. Much more ungainly, although, I would have thought, equally skilful.

And I can't leave this part of this post without at least mentioning a book by one of my very favourite authors - alas, now dead, Richard Brautigan. It isn't really about trout fishing at all, but according to one critic consists of "thinly veiled and often comical critiques of mainstream American society and culture". But it's a wonderful title and the book, like all of his books, is so droll, so wry, so quietly comic and yet so humane and deep thinking. Love him.

But the trout we eat has not been caught by a lone fisherman or tickler, so I will digress a little more. Trout is native to America and was brought here some 150 years ago so that the British could continue their fly fishing escapades. It's related to salmon but unlike salmon, spends all of its life in the river - never in the sea - well rainbow trout anyway. My trout was labelled as from the Goulburn Valley - and I know that much of the smoked trout that I buy is from the Goulburn Valley and so I thought to look it up. Because, of course, the vast majority of the trout that we buy - indeed all of it, (if you want truly wild trout then go fishing), is farmed. And most of it comes from the company known as Goulburn River Trout - shown below.

I don't think it's the only farm in the Goulburn Valley but it's the biggest - and it is a family business too, that is around 40 years old. The Goulburn Valley apparently supplies some 80% of Australia's farmed trout. Why? Well basically because Lake Eildon releases cold water from the bottom of the lake on a regular basis and it is this water - the coldness of it - that is essential for raising farmed trout. The ABC's Landline has a very interesting and detailed account of the farm - it's history and how it all works - so if you want to know do have a look. It's an old article now but no doubt most of it still holds true. Trout is farmed elsewhere though - I once had a month on Phillip Island and visited the trout farm there - it's only small, though the trout was utterly delicious. Curiously the New Zealanders do not seem to farm trout, although trout fishing is a big tourist thing. I remember seeing the trout swimming in the lake at Queenstown.

So back to cooking - which was my original intent. The three classic ways of cooking it are meunière, au bleu or aux amandes. And most of the big names do seem to think that you should just keep it simple, which those three recipes do. As Jane Grigson says:

"Trout being such a delicately flavoured fish, it follows that accompaniments should be delicate too, and of the first quality. They should be subservient, or at the most, complementary to the flavour of the fish. Avoid colourful little mounds of this and that, and serve the trout, straight. As you will see from the recipes below, butter is all that's required for really fresh fish. Almonds, or a few boiled new potatoes, belong to the longer caught fish that begins to need some help."

And I suspect that mine will need some help - for I bought it yesterday after all. So I think I shall go for either the Meunière method (which is basically, floured and fried in butter) or a recipe for baked trout which has a few more flavourings. And I shall give that here. Robert Carrier has an almost identical recipe although without the breadcrumbs - so it seems there is some consensus on this method as a valid one.

BAKED TROUT

4 trout, 4 oz breadcrumbs, 30z mushrooms, roughly chopped, 2oz onions, finely chopped, 1 lemon, heaped tablespoon chopped parsley, salt, pepper, plenty of butter.

Melt the onion gently in 2oz of butter over a low heat. In 10 minutes it will be golden butter coloured, not brown. Mix in a bowl with breadcrumbs, mushrooms and parsley. Season well with salt, pepper and lemon juice, having first grated the lemon rind into the stuffing. Cut pieces of foil about 12 inches square. In the centre of each spread a 5 inch line of butter - allow a generous tablespoon for each trout. Put the stuffing on top of the butter, dividing it between the four squares, and the trout on top of the stuffing. Twist the edge of the foil to form seals, oblong, baggy packages. Place them on a baking sheet and put in an oven at 325ºF for about 30 minutes.

Robert Carrier adds a dash of white wine.

Not sure why you wouldn't put the stuffing inside the fish.

And another little thing I learnt from Jane Grigson. Before you fry the fish in the butter, melt the butter and put it through a muslin lined sieve to remove the frothy bit. If you don't do this the fish will stick to your pan and you will lose some of the tasty skin.

Like many of my blogs I seem to have wandered from my original intent - which was to write something about cooking trout, but I thought I should check into where it came from, and also something about what trout is, and then I thought of all those romantic pictures of fly fishing and so I rambled. Well this site is called Rosemary's Ramblings I suppose. And this was definitely a ramble. With, in the end, not a lot about cooking it. I only have one trout but I think that will be enough for the two of us. And yes there will be boiled potatoes. But I haven't put any wine in the fridge!