Lemon Garlic Trout with Sicilian Harvest Salad – A Quick Fix Dinner

I haven’t been cooking much lately. After about three months of social hiatus, there was a lot of catching up to do. When my parents were in town, I spent all my spare time with them. I think that is the least one can do for their parents, especially when they visit only once in a blue moon. Luckily all our friends are very understanding, and we could pick up right where we left off. Since most all of our social interactions are centered around food, be it going out with friends to restaurants, or going to someone’s house for a nice home-cooked treat, there is always food and drinks present. That means less cooking at home these past weeks.

Well, anyway we are almost caught up on the social front, and the cricket season is over too. Congratulations to Siv, whose team won the North West Cricket League championship, second year in a row under his captaincy. I think I’m more thrilled than he is, it is not like I’m a cricket fan, in fact I hate the game, but the last thing I wanted was to deal with a husband mopping around the house. Luckily all is well, and he is in seventh heaven.

The point of all this intro was the fact that I hope our lives get back into some sort of schedule from this week on. To start the new week right, I made another one of our quick fix weekday dinners - an easy breezy salad with a side of protein.

Today’s salad recipe is from Michael Chiarello‘s Food Network show Easy Entertaining.  I chose this particular recipe, because the main ingredient in here is also the theme of this month’s AFAM -  Grapes. This salad uses both fresh grapes and raisins. The dried apricots and the raisins adds a rich sweet flavor to the salad, and along with the fresh grapes, the salad was the perfect accompaniment to my spicy pan-fried trout.

The original recipe called for radicchio and baby spinach. I used the pre packed European salad mix that contains radicchio, mache and frisée.   I also omitted the fried rosemary and prosciutto. Refer to the original recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_25831,00.html 

And here is my just slightly modified version.

Sicilian Harvest Salad

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup raisins
• Boiling water
• 1 cup halved large seedless grapes
• 1 tablespoon diced dried apricots (1/4-inch dice)
• 1/2 tbsp dried rosemary
• 1/4 large red onion, cut into small slivers
• 1/2 large lemon, juiced
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 5 oz pack of European salad mix 
• 1 tablespoon pine nuts, toasted

Method

Put the raisins in a small bowl and pour boiling water over them to cover. Let stand until plump and soft, about 10 minutes. Drain.

Put the raisins, grapes, apricots, rosemary and onion in a large bowl. Add the lemon juice and stir in the olive oil. Season with salt and pepper.

Add the leaves to the dried fruit mixture and toss well.  Scatter the pine nuts over the top.

Lemon Garlic Trout

This one is completely my own recipe, and like all my recipes it is so easy it is even embarrassing to type it up. If you can’t find trout filets, ask the friendly guy at the seafood counter to filet the fresh trout for you, so you don’t need to waste time cleaning the fish.

Ingredients

• 4 trout filets (from 2 trouts)
• 4 garlic cloves
• 1 tbsp black peppercorns
• 1/2 tbsp cayenne pepper 
• juice from 1 large lemon
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• Salt to taste

Method

In a mortar, combine the garlic and pepper and crush to a coarse paste. Add the cayenne, salt, 1 tbsp olive oil and lemon juice and mix well to form a thick marinade.

Brush the marinade on the fish filets.

Heat the remaining oil in a grill pan and pan-fry the fish filets, about 4 minutes on each side.

Serve hot with a side salad.

 

The Sicilian Harvest Salad is my entry for AFAM – Grapes hosted by Swapna of Swad. A Fruit A Month event was started by Maheswari of Beyond the Usual.

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Category: From the Grill, Garlic, Greens, Mains, Rosemary, Seafood, Soups and Salads