"trout" news and stories

If you think of the cool, jiggly Italian panna cotta as one of the most refreshing desserts around, this truly inventive starter will make you completely rethink it.

Australian blogger Jules, at thestonesoup, turns her panna cotta into a savory dish with cauliflower, adds a layer of an endive-and-scallion mixture, then tops it with smoked trout. Her recipe was inspired by chefs and cookbook authors Jane and Jeremy Strode, who made a name for themselves with their restaurant Bistrode, near Sydney.

A couple of notes about the recipe: Jules calls for "witlof," which, here in the states we know as chicory or endive. She also recommends leaf gelatin instead of the powdered form. Leaf gelatin comes in sheets, and isn't as available here as it is in Australia, Europe and elsewhere, so if you can't find it at the market, powdered gelatin will do just fine (one tablespoon of powdered gelatin equals about 4 gelatin sheets).

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Sunburst Trout Farm's caviar. Photo: Fred Sauceman, Flickr.

Cosmetologists have long raided the kitchen cabinet to make everything from cucumber lotion to egg white shampoo, but Sunburst Trout Farm's Sally Eason believes her new trout caviar skin cream is unprecedented.

"I always heard caviar was the best thing for your skin," says Eason, whose family has been raising mountain trout in western North Carolina since World War II. Laughing, she adds: "I'm hoping I'm going to look like I'm 22."

Caviar beauty treatments aren't new, but none of the products currently on the market are made from golden trout roe. Sunburst Trout Farm has a history of extracting value from trout eggs, having pioneered trout caviar in the early 1990s. The tangerine-hued eggs have since surfaced at ritzy restaurants and on Jacques Pépin's television show.

But in 2007, Sunburst's processing plant was destroyed by light-fingered arsonists who made off with 670 pounds of the farm's treasured roe.