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01/30/2004 Archived Entry: "Trout Thursday 2004"
Yesterday we had a fabulous dinner party to celebrate my favourite holiday - Trout Thursday. I blogged the rather improvised Trout Thursday we had last year and vowed that in 2004 I'd have friends over and celebrate properly. I also swore I'd have a proper dining room and kitchen. At least I've got a dining room. I don't have a proper kitchen - but in a few minutes we're going to go to Home Despot and order one (I'm not joking - we really are) - so it should be here in 10 weeks or so.
In any case, I didn't find trout as easily as Dieter Limeback or Paul Cowan seemed to. I had to go to 6 fish shops and travel halfway across the city before I found some gorgeous Rainbow Trout fillets. I bought 4. More fish than I've ever bought at one time. Ever.
The almost fruitless search for fish was the beginning of the disasters. I forgot to buy some crucial ingredients. I couldn't find half the placemats or napkins that we'd got as wedding gifts, and had to get Dave to rush over to my mom and dad's to borrow some at the last minute. We ran out of aluminum foil so I couldn't make the trout en papillote and had to make it in a giant turkey roasting pan. I ruined the first batch of caramel that I tried to make... and on and on and on. Luckily, it turned out delicious - even though the trout was a little over done.
The menu?
Homemade creamy tomato soup
Tangerine and mixed greens with orange dressing
Roast rainbow trout in red wine and shallots, with mashed potatoes and asparagus
Mascarpone and mixed berries in caramel (yummy!)
The best part was the company. There were eight of us: Rebecca Tierney-Hynes (my BFF), Sarah Loosemore (her partner), Julia (my sister), Bruce (our bestman), Emma Jane Hogbin and Graig (her partner), and my hubbie, Dave. They're all Good People - as Emma says ;-) - and there were lots of laughs. Check out all the Trout Thursday photos we took.
I'd highly recommend celebrating Trout Thursday. We'll do it again with more friends in 2005 when we will *definitely* have our proper kitchen!
Replies: 6 comments - add a comment
Hey Tara, sorry I'm a bit late with the commenting, but glad to hear you had a good TT! Everything might not have turned out as planned, but as long as you walk away from it with a good story, it counts as a success. You're veterans now! :)
Posted by Dieter @ 02/10/2004 01:46 PM EST
well the tomato soup was martha stewart:
http://www.marthastewart.com/page.jhtml?type=content&id=recipe1817&search=true&resultNo=1
The salad dressing was your recipe Emma Jane - except I think I added more OJ proportionately. And I don't have a good orange juicer so I used some fresh-squeezed and some concentrated OJ.
Basically I mixed white wine vinegar, oil and OJ - with about 1/8 vinegar, 1/4 oil and the rest OJ - and poured it over the greens, thinly sliced red onion and tangerine segments.
The trout recipe was made up... buy 4 largish fillets of trout (about 4lbs) and a bunch (10 or so) of shallots and thyme. Chop up the shallots. Slice 2 lemons. Put whole package thyme sprigs (without the plastic packaging - silly!), shallots, half the lemon slices, and a half a leftover bottle of red wine into a turkey roasting pan. Turn the oven on to 375 degrees farenheit and leave in for 10 minutes. Check to see if it's done... ours was over done, but I don't know if that's cause I left it in for more like 15 minutes or because it was then left in the oven to stay warm while people finished their salad for another 15 minutes. So just keep checking on it till it's done. Arrange nicely on a platter and put the rest of the lemon slices on it. If you've got some nice looking herbs around throw some of those on top too.
The mashed potatoes and asparagus were just done normally.
The berries were made with a recipe I just found by typing "berries mascarpone" into google. It's here http://fooddownunder.com/cgi-bin/recipe.cgi?r=24921 It makes enough for 8 people despite what it says in the recipe.
And there you go. Simple really. Unless you have all the disasters and forget everything like I did.
Posted by Tara @ 02/02/2004 03:47 PM EST
PS I'm hoping you'll share the recipes at some point...
Posted by emmajane @ 02/02/2004 02:29 AM EST
A goode olde tyme was had by all!
Thank you Tara for all the great food and everyone for great conversation, and to Sarah and Rebecca for driving us home.
Y'all truly are GPs!
Posted by graig @ 02/01/2004 01:25 AM EST
We had a great time, and the food was great and the people were Good People and nobody died. :)
Posted by emmajane @ 01/31/2004 11:26 PM EST
Tara was the hostess with the mostest! (and Dave was.. Dave)
Posted by Bruce R @ 01/30/2004 11:16 PM EST