Smoked Trout with Kale and Sour Cream

Relatively low temperatures makes for the best smoking.

INGREDIENTS:

As a starter serves four people

1 trout, about 1 pound, 500 grams

1 teaspoon salt

½ cup, 1,2 dl sour cream or crème fraiche

dried kale

pickled mushrooms

PREPARATION:

One of the advantages of traveling with a TV-crew, is that we can do things that seem silly or inconvenient, just because we want, or because it looks cool on TV. When we visited a small lake in Eastern Norway, we were going to make a super-simple dish using wild trout. We had a great location with a burning fire and a tent set up. I wanted to smoke the fish. Rather than trying to get enough smoky flavor just by hanging it over the fire, we decided to place the tent over the fire. It worked great – although the tent was not itself afterwards. (Think of a smoke-filled saloon anno 1890.)

I have adapted the recipe to work on a kettle grill.

Rub the fish with salt.

Light a kettle grill with only a few charcoal on one side of the grill. Place the fish as far as possible away from the fire. Place wood shavings over the ambers, put the lid on to trap the smoke and make sure the wood shavings do not burn. Smoke the fish for about 15  minutes – a little more or less depending on the temperature. The best if it is still a little undercooked in the middle.

Place a couple of tablespoons of sour cream on four plates. Rub the dried kale on the inside of a metal sieve, while holding it over the plates, so that the sour cream is covered in green dust.

Add some pickled mushrooms on the side.

Remove the skin from the fish. Cut the fish into fillets – it will come of the bone easily if you use a knife. Cut each fillet in two.