Eugene Weekly : Food : 05.25.06

Fry Away Home

Trout with the right stuff

BY CHEF BOY ARI

The words "pan fried trout" roll off the tongue with the cadence of a creek bubbling over polished stones. They make you think of campfires and cast iron skillets, make you reach for the lemon. Pan fried trout is a staple of the rustic fantasy of life in the West, a rite of spring that belongs alongside the honey smell of flowering cottonwood trees.

I spent my preschool days in a small town in northern Utah. We had Mormons next door, their pantry full of canned goods. They also had three cute daughters that young Chef Boy Ari would chase around the front stoop in his birthday suit. Nowadays, I try and do that and the neighbors call the cops.

Another extremely pleasant memory I have from those Utah days is the fried trout my parents and I used to get at the local restaurant. Alas, in the 30 years that have passed since those days, I've attempted much fried trout, most of which has failed. The main obstacle always seems to be that I can't seem to coax the batter to stick to the fish. Interestingly enough, this same batter seems to have no problem sticking to pretty much everything else in the kitchen, like the wall, the floor, my pants…

This problem is a result of the fact that fish are slimy. And eggs are slimy. And slime doesn't stick to slime. But the other night, I finally succeeded. And since fishing season is upon us, I'm going to share my new secret.

Before I do, some notes on the acquisition of fish: Easily, the best way to acquire fish is to live next door to fishermen. But they must be the right kind of fishermen.

The esoteric fly-fishers, who love nothing better than to hold a trout's speckled underbelly up to the light above some pristine stream before tossing it back … these people are of no use to me, because they don't bring me any fish. Then, there are the bait fishers who share the fly-fishers' perverted delight in dragging fish through the water via a metal barb in the cheek; but they don't share the desire to do so in clean and pristine settings. And even if they were to bring me fish from that great fishing hole downstream from the sewage treatment plant or from behind the dam at the pulp mill, I'm not interested. Fish from a skanky place will surely be skanky.

Then there are the subsistence fishermen, who do it for the food. Not that they don't enjoy the act — of course they do. It's the hunter's instinct after all, honed over thousands of years of evolution, that imparts the thrill of chasing and catching animals. Nonetheless, most bait fishermen are of little use to me, because they eat the fish themselves.

Then there are those like my neighbor Bill, rare individuals who embody that perfect mix of perversion and conscience which results in me getting lots of good fish. Bill likes clean water and derives great enjoyment from dragging fish to the surface of it. Bill is practical enough to realize that throwing back fish is a waste of good food. And if it wasn't for his wife — who, bless her heart, is sick of fish — Bill would keep the fish himself. But since he can't, and he still wants to fish, I help Bill out, turning his perversion into a useful activity. I plug Bill, and his vestigial hunter's instinct, back into the food chain.

The other day, Bill brought home a load of big lake trout, which he had kept on ice from the moment they left the water. This is essential. Another essential is washing the fish flesh after gutting or filleting them — you want to remove the stray gut juice and fish piss as soon as possible. I filleted and washed the fish. Then I breaded them with a three-stage technique that is actually a breading for fried green tomatoes, but it works great on fish. The only thing I changed was adding the dill.

The beauty of the three-stage breading process is that each layer sticks to the layer beneath it, and the bottom layer, which isn't slimy, sticks to the slimy fish. The layers build up into a three-ply coating that fries like my fond memories of home.

To do it, set up the following three bowls:

Bowl 1 (the "dredging mixture"): 3 cups flour, 2 tablespoons salt, 1 tablespoon each of pepper, and dried dill. Mixed.

Bowl 2 (the "egg wash"): 1 cup milk and 4 eggs, beaten together.

Bowl 3 (the "cornmeal batter"): Mix 1 cup flour, 2 cups cornmeal, 1 teaspoon each of cayenne, chili powder, granulated garlic, and cumin, 1/2 teaspoon each of coriander and onion powder.

Dredge each filet in the flour mixture of bowl 1. Then dunk the filet in the egg wash of bowl 2. Then roll it around in bowl 3 for the final cornmeal coat. Fry the filets in oil, preferably in a cast iron skillet, until golden brown.

Squeeze lemon on top and eat.