Trout Hash

We went to Sam's to buy the ingredients to make cat food.  And, we needed fruit for the bridesmaid's brunch I'm doing for my niece, Samantha.  I'd found a couple of great new recipes so wanted baby back ribs and a whole chicken.  Well, they were out of whole chickens.  Even though it was Saturday, by the time I escaped the office and got home and we were ready to leave for Sam's it was 6:30.  I figured salmon on the grill was the best solution for dinner.  Right next to the salmon was a package of steelhead trout fillets.  I asked Connie if he'd ever had steelhead trout and he said he'd not.  I'd not ever had it either.  Time for an adventure.

On the way home we chatted about which cookbook was most likely to have a great recipe to get us started.  Ray's Boathouse was the hands down winner in our minds.  Followed closely by Legal Seafoods.  He unloaded the car, I headed for the bookshelf with the cookbooks from restaurants.  How much fun is that?  Great memories of wonderful places we've eaten.  Terrific meals.  Lots of love and laughter.  But, alas, not a single trout recipe in the Ray's Boathouse cookbook.  And the Legal Seafoods one just wouldn't work.  Hmph!  On to the barbecue shelves.  Yes, shelves.  I love barbecue.  Grilling.  That's why we grill when it's zero degrees.  We love it.  At my old house, I kept a grill under the overhang of the garage.  I'd stand out there in the snow and a down coat and grill.  Now, fortunately, we have a screened porch.  The grill is on that.  Lots more pleasant!

Bobby Flay.  Nope.  Steve Raichlen.  Nope.  Five other grilling cookbooks.  Nope.  I was about to give up and spied Sublime Smoke by Cheryl and Bill Jamison.  A cookbook that I've owned for years but had yet to use.  On the other hand, their Smoke and Spice cookbook is one of my top ten most used cookbooks.  It's fantastic.  Bingo.  Three great trout recipes.  The only problem was that they all required 2-3 hours to cook and it was approaching 8 pm.  So, I went with the quickest - which still wasn't very quick. But, guess what.  We still had to put away all the stuff from Sam's.  The kitchen needed some TLC.  And, it was Saturday evening.  Nobody was going to get on our case if we ate VERY fashionably late at 10 pm! 

What did we think?  We loved the smoked trout. 

The potatoes could have used earlier herbs.  And, maybe a tad more half and half.  When I reheated everything for brunch, I added a poached egg to each serving.  And, I warmed up the potatoes with a bit of half and half whisked with some dijon mustard.  We actually liked the leftovers better than the original dish.

Trout Hash

Ingredients:
3/4 lb skin-on trout fillets
2 t Dijon mustard
salt and freshly ground pepper

1 1/2 T butter
1 1/2 T olive oil
1 lb Yukon gold potatoes, cubed
1 medium red onion, diced
1/4 c half and half
1 egg
2 t Dijon mustard
3 T minced fresh chives
3 T minced fresh parsley
1 1/2 T minced fresh dill

Directions:
Slather the trout with the dijon mustard.

Leave the skin on.  Wrap it in plastic and leave it at room temp for 30 minutes.

Soak your smoking wood if necessary.  We used shagbark hickory bark.

While the fish is resting, get ready for the hash.  Cube the potatoes and dice the onion.  Beat the egg and whisk in the dijon and half and half. 

Start your smoker at about 25 minutes.  Now, Connie looked up the directions on the Weber Grill site and it said to use just the smoker.  We'd have eaten somewhere around the 4th of July if we'd used just the smoker.  We wound up using the burners on each side of the fish fillet - all set to the lowest setting.  We smoked with some of the shagbark hickory bark we buy at the farmers market from our friend, Gordon Jones.  He's the guy who makes that wonderful shagbark hickory syrup.  Put the fish fillet on the grill skin side down.

When you start smoking the fish, you can start the hash.  Melt the butter in a large skillet.  Add the olive oil.  Once the butter/olive oil mixture is bubbling, add the potatoes and onion. 

Cook on medium heat until the onions are nicely browned - about 20 minutes. 

Stir in the egg mixture and the herbs. 

Cook for 5-10 more minutes.

Serve topped with the smoked trout. 
NB:  The recipe called for mixing the trout into the potato mixture and cooking it for 5 more minutes.  When we took the trout off the grill it was perfectly cooked.  I wasn't going to overcook it by mixing it with the potatoes and continuing to cook it. 

The next morning, I turned the leftovers into brunch by topping the hash with a poached egg - or two in Connie's case.  The trout was mixed with the potato mixture and I heated it up with a bit more half and half and dijon mustard.  It was even better the second day!

adapted from Sublime Smoke

Southern Crab Hash

My first dish from the Food and Wine posts.  When I found out I was one of the bloggers selected by Foodbuzz to highlight Food and Wine for a month, I knew right where to start searching for inspiration.  My first email (The Dish) from Food and Wine is Quick Spanish recipes on 9/6/2007.  Needless to say, I didn't have to dig quite that far back.  So many good recipes to try!!! I started my recipe search with The Dish listing the top ten gazpachos from 8/26/10.  I already had most of the ingredients and had gazpacho on the menu.  There were three great recipes so I decided to do a tasting of three for the girls night out crew on Friday.  Then, I went on to the summer produce and found a couple that'll use up the green beans.  Then, the fruit muddled drinks, too many good ones to choose from!  Final stop for the day, Southern specialties.  Of course, the lemon brined fried chicken caught my eye.  I've never made fried chicken.  And, the recipe is from Thomas Keller of The French Laundry.  Awesome.  But, it requires brining the chicken overnight.  Not something I want to dig into when I finally get home from a grip and grin put on by the Financial Planning Association.  Not only that, but Connie's got to leave to play bridge the next evening.  No time for fried chicken.  That'll wait til later in the week.  Hmmm, I'm doing pork tenderloins for Girls Night Out on Friday.  Maybe I should look for a fish or seafood.  As luck would have it, a couple of pages down I found the recipe for Southern Crab Hash. 

So, you ask, how do you get The Dish?  Sign up at foodandwine.com.  They're not pests about sending you emails every time you turn around.  There are nine in my archives from August.  The recipes are built around a theme - like a holiday or seasonal ingredients.  I've gotten a lot of great recipes from The Dish.  Foodandwine is also a great site.  I love their recipe search feature.  I used it several times while I was rounding out the menus with the recipes I'd found. 

On the way home from work, Connie ran by the grocery store.  I got most of the furry kids fed and started in on dinner and one of the gazpachos for Friday evening.  We'd have to hustle to get dinner put together and Connie out the door in time.  This seemed like the easiest recipe of the batch.  Now, I like hash but it's not something I crave.  So, I wasn't expecting to LOVE this.  But, I did.  It was amazing.  It was all I could do to not go nibble when I was done with my serving.  The potatoes were wonderfully creamy and just went perfectly with the crabmeat and cream cheese.  Connie's not a huge fan of potatoes. His first comment when he saw the recipe was, "It sounds like a bunch of potatoes."  Then, he saw the dish and he said, " Oh, it LOOKS like a bunch of potatoes."  But being the good sport he is, he dug in.  And, he too didn't want to quit eating this.  Leftovers for lunch - YAY!

Southern Crab Hash

Ingredients:
2 pounds large red potatoes, cut into 3/4" pieces
5 slices thick cut bacon, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 T olive oil
1/2 t salt
3 oz cream cheese (we used lowfat)
1/4 c milk (we used 1%)
1 1/2 t Worcestershire sauce
pinch cayenne pepper
3/4 lb crabmeat (we used claw meat)
1/8 t freshly ground black pepper
3 T chopped fresh chives

Directions:

Chop the potatoes

Cook them in salted water until they're tender.  If you're using redskins, you don't need to peel them.  Drain the potatoes and set them aside.  In a large skillet, brown the bacon.  I've found that using a scissors to cut the raw bacon into pieces speeds the cooking process. 

When the bacon is nice and brown, remove it from the skillet with a slotted spoon.  Drain all but one tablespoon of the bacon fat.  Brown the onion in the bacon fat.  When it's nice and browned, remove the onion from the skillet.

Add the olive oil to the skillet and heat it til it's shimmering.  (The original recipe called for using 3 T of the bacon fat...way too much bad fat for my taste!)  Add the potatoes and cook them for 6 minutes.  Leave them alone for the whole six minutes.  Avoid the temptation to stir or peek.  Finally, once the six minutes is over, give them a good stir.  Cook them for another 6 minutes.  While the potatoes are finishing, put the cream cheese, milk, Worcestershire and cayenne in a small saucepan on medium heat. 

Stir until the cheese melts.  Add the crabmeat and half of the chives and stir just until the ingredients are combined.  Back to the potatoes.  They'll be nicely browned by this time.  Add the onion and bacon and heat through for a couple of minutes. 

Stir the crabmeat mixture into the potatoes.  Serve topped with the rest of the chives. 


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This post is part of a series featuring recipes from the FOOD and WINE archive. As a FOOD and WINE Blogger Correspondent, I was chosen to do four recipes a week from FOOD and WINE. I received a subscription to FOOD and WINE for my participation.