The trout comes from a spring-fed farm in the Catskills, two fish a seating, on ice, at ten in the morning. We buy it whole because a fillet tells you nothing. A whole fish tells you how it was kept: clear eyes, red gills, skin that springs back.
Sam takes the roe first. It is cured for forty minutes in salt and a little sugar, rinsed, and kept cold until the first course, where it sits on celeriac rounds and catches the brown butter.
Forty minutes later
The fillets are cooked skin-down on the grate, at the hottest edge, and turned once for the count of ten. By the time the fourth course reaches you, the same fish has been on your plate twice.
The bones go into the stock for the next morning. The skin that does not make it to a plate is fried for staff meal.
- Fish per seating
- 2
- Roe cure
- 40 minutes
- On the grate
- about 300°C
- Courses from one fish
- 2