Whisk Wednesdays: Truite aux Amandes (Trout with Almonds)

       The recipe prepared for this week (actually last week as this one is a week behind) is from Class 21, Part 1: Truite aux Amandes (Trout with Almonds).   It can be found in the cookbook Le Cordon Bleu At Home on pages 49-50.   

      For this class, we were supposed to clean six whole trout and cook them.  You think?  Hmmm...  First of all, who eats a whole trout per serving?  That is way too much of a portion for around here, so I made half a trout per person, and it was plenty. 

      I didn't clean the trout...I have a fish guy who does all that and packages it all up so nicely for us, so to keep him in business, we let him do things like that...that's my excuse for getting the trout cleaned, boned, heads, tails, and fins removed. 

      I followed the rest of the recipe instructions on cooking the trout, first dredging it in a bit of flour and then frying it stovetop for a few minutes on each side, followed by the browning of the butter sauce, toasting the almonds in that.   

     When I poured a little of it on my portion of trout (and doused the guys' portions with the rest as they swear there is no such thing as "too much butter"), I could instantly see that the figure-friendly fish was no longer going to able to hold that title.  It certainly tasted delicious, though!  The toasty almonds in that butter sauce over that trout was very very good.  I can certainly think of lots of other fish which would certainly love to be bathed in such a sauce.   

      I forgot to chop parsley to sprinkle on top, and while I had lemon available, I am not a fan of lemon on trout for some reason.  I like the taste of the trout to come through.  (And, if you know me at all, you know I am always looking for excuses to have lemon on or in anything, so this is a bit unusual.  I left the lemon out  in this recipe, it was just a slice per portion placed on top before serving.) 

     The guys raved about it all and definitely would like to see this appear more often, so I do believe it will.  This is one very fast meal...the alfredo took the longest and even that was not long...Mark likes pasta with fish, so you will be seeing a lot of pasta in the next few weeks on the fish plates.

 

      If you would like to see how the other Whisk Wednesday members fared in this class, click

here, and then on the Whisk Wednesdays connect to individual bloggers, or better yet, come and join us!  Shari has the ingredients posted on her site at the click, so while we can't post the recipe instructions, you can at least look at the ingredients, and I bet you can figure out a lot of it from there. 

 

The next assignment is:  • Class 21, Part 2 (Post on Wednesday, February 4):
Bar à la Normande (Sea Bass with Mushrooms and Cream) pages 180-181