Love trout? If so, you’ll enjoy this unusual sauce. Bacon, yes. Onions, yes. But raisins and trout? Really different, but somehow they’re perfect too.
This is only the 2nd trout recipe here on my blog. It’s not something I ever seek out, and even though I see them at the markets frequently enough, I breeze on by. There’s a reason. Reasons. I hate bones. Really I do. I’ll avoid eating any kind of fish that has a high risk of bones. Not that I’ve ever swallowed one. I haven’t. But I hate picking bones out of my mouthful of fish. And if there are 4 fish portions on a platter, with just one of them with some accidental bones, guess who will get that serving? Always me. And this filleted trout – sure enough – I did get one bite with bones. It didn’t exactly ruin it for me, but it made me sigh. Of course, I’d get bones. And these were the little itty-bitty tiny ones, so I had to spit out the whole bite. The other reason is that as a child, I had to eat a lot of trout, caught by my Dad when we’d go camping every year in the California Sierra mountains. My dad was an avid fisherman, but only for freshwater trout. Rainbow, Dolly Varden mostly.
When I wrote up my other post about trout I told the story about our camping trips when I was a youngster. They were our annual vacation when I was about age 5-12. At age 14 we moved for a few years to Newport, Rhode Island, so no fishing trips during that time. Back in California once again, and after I left for college, my parents continued to go camping, but I think they bought a trailer then. Prior to that it was tent camping, always alongside a stream. I do have fond memories of a couple of the campgrounds, some on the west slope of the Sierras, near Sonora, and some on the eastern slope NW of Bishop at Virginia Lakes.
I liked to read even then, and usually my Mom brought along several new magazines, like McCalls, Ladies Home Journal, and always the Reader’s Digest and I read those cover to cover. I remember reading a few paperback books back then too. Occasionally I’d go fishing with my Dad. My Mom did fish a little bit, but it was my Dad’s passion, not my mother’s. And it certainly wasn’t mine, either. I didn’t catch many, and it seemed so tedious from the vantage point of a youngster, to stand on the shore of a lake or stream and keep casting out into the water and slowly, sometimes jerkily (on purpose) reeling in the hook and line.
My Dad made his own lures for 
several years. On a whim I just now went to the ‘net and sure enough, the lures my dad used to make, called super-dupers, are still made and still sold. Back in the late 40’s and early 50’s they were expensive – and new. If you’re a fisherman, you know that if fish are biting on some new fangled lure, then you’d better have some. I helped my dad make dozens and dozens of these lures and he gave them to old friends and new fishing friends he’d meet beside the lakes and streams.
Anyway, since many of you may have read about this story before, my Dad was happiest when he came back to camp in the mornings, before breakfast, with a creel full of trout. There was a limit of how many he could catch (I don’t recall what it was) and it was always my Dad’s goal to catch “the limit.” He’d dutifully clean them and they’d go into a separate ice chest in our camp. And then we’d eat breakfast. Usually pan fried trout coated in cornmeal and fried in bacon grease, along with eggs and toast. Lunch, maybe something else, but trout was always on the menu for dinner. My mother and I got very tired of trout, and truly, so did my Dad. Finally my mother would issue an edict – my Dad couldn’t catch any more trout until we’d eaten up all the fish we had. That was a tall order since my Mom and I had stopped eating them. So my Dad would reluctantly give them away. Oh, it pained him to give them away. But what was even funnier, to me, was that most other campers, strangers and friends alike, all had more than enough fish themselves. Only people who were new arrivals didn’t have any – yet.
Obviously it was on these camping trips, eating trout morning and night, that I developed my aversion to bones. And I can’t say that trout is something I ever order, hardly. Yet it’s a very 
delicate flavored fish, and there’s nothing wrong with trout. It’s just not a favorite for me. But if you like trout, you’ll surely like this recipe. Tarla Fallgatter prepared it at a cooking class recently. I found the recipe (Tarla made a few changes to it) online, as it was printed in Gourmet, in March of 2007. The sauce is the best part of it – I think trout and bacon do go together somehow. The sauce is very easy to make – bacon, onion, raisins, wine vinegar, sugar and salt. The trout is filleted, hopefully, and it’s drizzled with a little oil and given a rub-dub with some kind of Creole or spicy spice rub and broiled. It’s done in no time flat, then serve with the sauce and some Italian parsley on top.
What’s GOOD: the delicacy of the trout flesh, and the combo with the bacon/raisin sauce. It’s really very tasty with trout. This recipe is also very easy.
What’s NOT: actually nothing, unless you have an aversion to bones too. Did I mention that I hate fish bones? Tee-hee. The sauce is really, really good.
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Broiled Trout with Bacon, Onions and Raisins
Recipe By: From Tarla Fallgatter, cooking instructor, 2013 (she got it from Gourmet Mag, March 2007)
Serving Size: 8
BACON RAISIN SAUCE:
6 thick bacon slices — cut crosswise into 1/8-inch-wide strips
1 cup red onion — halved, thinly sliced
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
TROUT:
4 whole rainbow trout — cleaned and deboned, removing heads and tails (butterflied), about 10-12 ounces each
2 tablespoons Italian parsley — coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons unsalted butter — room temp
1 1/2 teaspoons Cajun spice rub — or spice rub of your choice
2 teaspoons olive oil — plus additional if necessary
1. Cook bacon in a heavy skillet over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until golden, about 5 minutes. Transfer bacon with a slotted spoon to paper towels to drain, then pour off all but 1/4 cup fat (add additional olive oil if bacon doesn’t render enough fat).
2. Add onion to skillet and cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until onion is softened and beginning to brown on edges, about 6 minutes. Stir in bacon, raisins, vinegar, sugar, and 1/4 teaspoon salt and boil until liquid is reduced to about 1/3 cup, about 1 minute. Remove from heat.
3. Preheat broiler and place foil in 2 large baking pans. Spray foil with olive oil or nonstick spray.
4. Arrange 2 trout, opened and skin side down, in each pan. Brush flesh of fish with 2 teaspoons oil (total) and sprinkle with a spice rub and remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt.
5. Broil 1 pan of fish about 4 inches from heat until just cooked through, 2 to 4 minutes, then loosely cover with foil to keep warm and broil second pan of fish in same manner. Reheat bacon mixture and add butter; cook until butter is melted. Spoon bacon mixture down center of each fish and drizzle with remaining juices from skillet. Garnish with Italian parsley and serve immediately.
Per Serving: 158 Calories; 8g Fat (43.9% calories from fat); 11g Protein; 12g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 37mg Cholesterol; 225mg Sodium.
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