Baked Fish with Black Trumpet Crust

When Sitka Salmon sent me loads of fish to cook with this year in preparation for a project we were working on, I started working on a few great ways to use frozen fish, especially white-fleshed fish like black rockfish and cod. Making a topping with dried black trumpets, leeks and tomatoes was one of my favorite preps on the first round of things I made, and it is a great method you can apply to lots of fish, using a number of different mushrooms.

This recipe uses black trumpet butter, along with fresh trumpets, but regular butter is ok too.

Black trumpets take well to a lot of preparations, but one of the best parts about them is that they dry and rehydrate like a dream, making cooking with dehydrated ones really easy, so they were the first mushrooms I reached for here. Other mushrooms with a similar structure like yellowfoot chanterelles, as well as things like porcini could work well here too though. 

The recipe itself I started working on after I was flipping through an old book by Swiss chef Fredy Girardet, a favorite chef of mine in the world of old-school masters. The dish had no image, but I could see it in my mind. It was just a simple dish of freshly caught white fish (bream I believe) baked with a topping of freshly cooked garden vegetables referred to as a crust. 

The “crust” is more of a juicy mushroom and vegetable topping than a crispy, crunchy something.

In America we hear the word crust and think crisp, or crunchy, but here it’s used more in the sense of a juicy topping that keeps the fish juicy as it cooks. Tweaking it around a bit wasn’t difficult at all, and the black mushrooms make a great contrast to some white fleshed fish. It’s a great way to use some dried mushrooms, and you could use the topping on a number of different things, for example:

• Chicken cutlets 
• On top of slices of baked pumpkin or potatoes, baked the same way as a gratin
• Take a slice of good bread and toast it, then top with the mushroom topping, maybe some grated cheese, and bake. Cut into wedges and serve as an appetizer. 
• The black trumpet-veggie mixture, without the breadcrumbs, would make a great foccaccia or flatbread topper. 
• Use the mushroom filling, along with some cheese, to stuff tomatoes that have been halved and had their seeds removed, then bake until browned per usual.

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Baked Fish with Black Trumpet-Vegetable Crust

Fish baked with a mushroom and vegetable topping. Serves 4-8 if you add some side dishes.

Prep Time20 mins

Cook Time15 mins

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: French

Keyword: Black Trumpet Mushrooms, FIsh

Servings: 4

Ingredients

Black Trumpet-Vegetable Crust

• 4 oz fresh leek tender parts only, cleaned and diced ¼ inch
• ½ cup vegetable stock
• 4 oz fresh black trumpets
• 6 tablespoons black trumpet butter or unsalted butter, melted
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• A few grinds of fresh pepper
• 4 oz finely peeled seeded tomatoes, finely chopped
• 2 Tablespoon sliced Italian parsley
• Vegetable oil for drizzling
• 4 tablespoons breadcrumbs

Fish

• 4 six oz filets of a white fleshed fish like cod halibut, catfish, etc
• Lemon wedges for serving

Instructions

• Heat the leeks and stock in a pan and cook until dry and the leeks are tender, then transfer to a bowl to cool. Cut the trumpets into 1 inch pieces roughly, then add to the leeks along with the tomato, salt, melted butter, pepper, and parsley.
• Spread the mushroom mixture over 6 oz pieces of flaky white fish, like cod, sole, rockfish, catfish, etc, sprinkle with breadcrumbs, criss-cross with oil, and broil at 500F for 10 minutes or until lightly browned and just cooked.
• Serve with lemon wedges and whatever vegetable accompaniments.

A good haul of Craterellus fallax.