Baked Stuffed Trout

When we lived in California, my gardener was busy at the grill four or five times a week all year long. We moved to Montana last summer and this continued... I usually made the side dishes and my gardener would grill the meat (chicken, fish, burgers, steak) pretty much every night.

I had no reason to think that might change. December? Ha! Snow? Ha! Wind? Ha! My gardener could handle it... just fire up the grill and put those burgers on! If it gets chilly, just come back into the house to wait for them!

Then December came. Then it snowed. Then the temperature dipped to somewhere below zero and the cold wind blew in from the north. One day my gardener said "Why don't you cook those fish inside tonight?"

Who knew that it'd get that cold??

As a result we've been learning to cook and eat fish other ways than by grilling them. I've been looking for recipes for trout since we've been enjoying these and decided to stuff and bake a couple trout last night.
I cut up one celery rib, one jalapeno and a couple slices of onion into a fine dice.
Remember this bread? When it started to get a little dry, I sliced and toasted it then put it in the freezer.

I put some of the bread in a baggie and crushed it so I had fine crumbs. I sauteed the vegetables in a little olive oil and added some garlic powder and dried parsley. When the vegetables were soft, I tossed in the bread crumbs, adding just a little more olive oil until all the ingredients came together.I sprinkled the inside of the trout with freshly ground black pepper.
Then stuffed the trout with the vegetable mixture.
I was going to secure the fish with toothpicks, but I had a heck of a time getting the toothpick through the very tough skin, so decided to tie them up. I sprinkled a little oil over them, drizzled a little grapefruit juice and threw in a few grapefruit sections just for fun.
These baked at 450F for 35 minutes and were done perfectly.

These were good sized fish... 13-14" head to tail. I didn't finish all of mine so I made my gardener a fish and potato burrito to take to work with him this morning.


I wish I could share one of these beautiful cold-water trout with each one of you! The meat is so pink it looks like salmon and the flavor is out of this world!
Do you know what this is? It's Stainleess Steel Soap, good for removing fish, garlic and onion odors from your hands! Of course, it's not "soap" at all, just a piece of stainless steel. It works and I don't care why! If you want to know why, you can read all the chemistry blah-blah-blah here.