Broiled Rainbow Trout

Monday night, we were going to have rainbow trout for dinner, but we ended up going to the movies and eating cheese steaks there. Ann wondered because of the snow if I might be able to get home early enough on Tuesday to have the trout. I was able: it was a painfully early night at the restaurant.

Rainbow Trout with Roasted Haricots Verts and Lentils

I love trout, always have. As a child, I remember that my father would take the whole family to Graves Mountain Lodge down in Syria, VA in Madison County each spring for the opening of trout season. My brother and I would fish ineffectually with the wrong gear in the Rose River until dinner time, at which point, we would consume massive amounts of fried trout. Bones be damned, I love me some trout.

For restaurant service, I take the head off the trout and butterfly them, removing the spine and then I surgically remove all the tiny and hugely annoying pin bones. This three minutes of labor per fish yields the perfectly deboned butterflied trout that you see above. Now multiply this labor by the 64 fish that I prepped last week and you could understand why I might not want to see another trout again for a very long time. But so delicious is trout that I would willingly go through a lot of labor to put it on the table.

This trout I rubbed with olive oil, salt, and pepper and put under the broiler for about 3 minutes while I reheated the lentils in the microwave. Ann roasted the haricots verts before I got home. Dinner took five minutes to put on the table, which is good, because we were both voraciously hungry. This is about as simple, easy, and delicious as dinner gets.