Ocean Trout with Castelfranco & Wild Arugula

Tano are you gonna be taking the food out? Where’s Tano? Tano, the orecchiette. You know, people always wonder where a chef or a cook is inspired. Does one get their inspiration from cookbooks? Does one get their inspiration from reading magazines? Does one get their inspiration from eating out? Does one get their inspiration from tasting something? And the answer really is, all of them. And if you are always saving those parts that feel like you could use them again, file them somewhere, in there, you’ll find yourself drawing from those inspirations when you’re stuck or need to create a new dish. So yesterday when Dragan pulled up, Liz and I jumped on the truck as we do every Monday, always eager to see if Dragan has anything new. Guys, you gotta check this out, Liz. We were so happy to see finally small chicories, both more commonly found red radicchio, but also my favorite chicory which is the castelfranco. That beautiful, pale, green, spotted chicory. Dragan. Liz, do you want a bigger size you want smaller? Smaller, I’ll take the box. [Dragan] The chico, those are red spring onions right there. So Liz and I are gonna try, we don’t know what we’re making yet, but we we’re thinking of possibly using the castelfranco and trout. I’m gonna open up, let me just slice the core a little bit. I’m gonna unpeel the outer leaves of the castelfranco. And then let’s just use, Liz, the inside little tiny, The baby babies? Yeah, to form some beautiful little cup-ish kind of thing. We have red onions, we can shave those. Do you have any garlic puree? Yeah. We also got wild arugula from Dragan yesterday, [Liz] The sturdy kind. Well, we’ve got two stars of this. We’ve got our trout- Fish, and then we have our castelfranco. So should I get some garlic vin? To get garlic vin, Arugula. And, I’ll grab a mandoline so we can maybe shave those. Okay. All right, I’ll be back. Okay. Nancy and I, work together very closely on a daily basis. We collaborate on dishes together, we brainstorm new ideas for new dishes or ingredients that are coming up in season. I wanna do something new. We have some trout, we have the chicory. We don’t wanna make it too summery, and obviously chicories are not even available in the summer. But what do we have that’s gonna make it feel more wintery, that we have right now. Squash? We always have purees of the root vegetables. Should we try that? Yeah. Almost every day we talk about what is new in the market, what dishes we should rotate in and out for the menu if the season is changing or if it just becomes a little too stagnant. If we’ve seen too many of the same things on the menu, then we’ll just discuss what new things are interesting, and what we should change them out for. Oh, good, so what did you grab? I have arugula, I brought a mandoline for our onions, for later, if we wanna do that. And some garlic vinaigrette Look, where’s our plate? I have oval and I have- I don’t know, why is it… well, let’s try this. Alright, so are you gonna saute a little? Are you gonna wilt that? Sure, I’ll wilt some of this. Yeah. Okay. yeah, yeah. So here’s our garlic vin, So this vinaigrette, that’s made with garlic, that has been confited, so it’s cooked in olive oil, until it’s completely soft and we puree it with lemon juice and you’re gonna wilt the wild arugula, which is so sturdy and so- Spicy so spicy. So I just have a pan heating up with some olive oil in it and I’m going to just drop in a handful of arugula, and season it with salt and wilt it really quickly. Not crispy, just wilted. Add two, that’s plenty, plenty plenty. [Liz] It’s Okay. Yeah. So this fish would go on top. Okay, this we would have to dress to do with the herbs, but what if you shave your onions around, Okay. ’cause I really liked that look and I think that also will be pretty, ’cause we wanna see it. Right. Often times with our dishes, we’ll build them, but with maybe a surprise on the bottom, so the surprise on the bottom here, is going to be that garlic vin. Oftentimes when eating a dish, when you find that surprise at the bottom and you experience or taste, a whole new flavor, it brings the interest back in the dish. It can be boring eating the same thing all the way down. So we’ll just go around. This is so pretty, it reminds me of eyelashes. [Liz] If you want a super curled look, you can put them in ice water right now. No, I think these are great. So we got our fish. Yup. It’s called- ocean trout? ocean trout. They’re really big. And we catch them in the Tasmanian sea, I think. Which is close to Australia, maybe, and that’s how we get them as sea fish. Ocean fish. Sea fish, okay, great. So when you season fish I’ll salt the skin side, and then do both salt and pepper on the flesh side. I never do pepper on the skin because pepper tends to burn. So I’m heating my oil so I can sear my fish. So I’ll just put this in my hot sauté pan with the hot oil. It’s a pink fish, very fatty and oily a lot like salmon. And we’re just holding the fish down, so the skin doesn’t get wrinkles while it’s cooking. And if you hold it down, you get a really even sear. And the skin is crispy all the way through. I usually do it for about three-ish minutes until I can keep feeling it and when I feel like the skin isn’t bubbling under my fingers anymore, then I know that it’s flat, and I’m getting crispy skin all the way throughout. And once I feel like the skin is browned and crispy evenly, then I’ll flip it over so I don’t burn the skin. So I’m just gonna give it a peek. Yes, so now I’m gonna flip the fish. Careful not to splatter oil everywhere and turn the heat down so it doesn’t get too brown on the bottom. Most people when they see this dish, they might think when it comes to the table if they order it, Yeah, “Wait a minute, “I didn’t order salmon.” “I ordered trout.” And this is trout, they have a very- A big trout. A huge trout. It looks like salmon, I would say, in all of the ways, I don’t think it’s quite as fatty as salmon. It doesn’t have as big of a flake as a salmon would, but I think it’s much more flavorful. So I’m gonna say that this is done and pull it off. So we got our fish. Yep. Okay, let’s just set the fish on top and see if we’re getting anywhere. Well, that’s cute. That’s pretty. Yeah, Ish, what are we gonna do with this? You know what we should do? I love the look of that sliced egg kinda thing that we saw in Israel. What about ’cause again, it would bring in the yellow. Yeah. Go get an egg. Do you have any lemon vin? Yeah And we have the herbs we want. Yeah So let’s do that. All right. Okay. Be right back. When I was in Israel, with Liz, maybe four years ago eating at restaurant, I was so taken by the simple way a fish was finished and I don’t even remember what the fish was but it was simply a egg that was very roughly sliced. So it wasn’t one that was sliced in a egg slicer, so they weren’t perfect slices that were like placed on top. What I really loved about it was, how roughly sliced they were and it was just a pile of them on top of the fish, and it tasted so good together. But I knew when I saw that, that one day, I would use that when I found the right place to use it. And right now I think that that might be great to finish this dish. I have vinaigrette. Great. I think with this, rather than taking it all apart, if we were to do it, we’re gonna have to dress it, Right. in a little lemon vin with salt, and a little lemon juice. I’m just gonna dress it Drizzle it- Yeah, I’m just gonna drizzle it. Maybe we’ll just do the herbs on top. Okay. Do you wanna slice that egg? And then we’ll put it on this beautiful fish. Yeah, remember when we saw this though? I know, it was so cool. And let’s herb that salad. Okay. We’ve got parsley- Parsley. in there, what else? We have the greens of the spring onion that we used. Oh that will be is nice. So do it on the bias Or just like a chive, I can slice some of that. [Liz] And the parsley is just the leaves, they’re so pretty. This just so beautiful. [Liz] You’re not gonna do anything to those. We can put them both on. Should we layer them in or just do it on top? [Liz] Yeah, you wanna lift one? Egg, right on top, got it? Yep. All right, there we go. I think that’s really pretty. [Liz] It is beautiful. But my only concern is, is it going to eat too dry? What would we have that just gives it a little besides a drizzle of olive oil? It could be a drizzle of vinaigrette. Let’s just do a vinaigrette around, A drizzle. a drizzle of vinaigrette, not around here ’cause this is already dressed. Right. Just around here, the onions and everything but not there. So let’s get rid of here. You know what I’m saying? Just to make this look saucy, but I think that’s nice. Okay, a little salt. Don’t forget to taste it all together. Arugula’s not too bitter? Mm-mm. I really love the egg, and the trout. The egg and the trout are really good together. Yeah. This is a wild arugula. It’s a lot sturdier than- Baby arugula. Yeah, it’s not a baby arugula . It’s a wild arugula that’s sturdy. You can sauté the more common varieties arugula, but they will get really soft, this still has texture. It’s really good. Okay There’s a new dish for the Osteria menu.