Leslie Bartosh, CEC, AAC, FMP

Pesce alla Marinara su Orzo Many cultures have dishes that revolve around some kind of seafood being cooked in a tomato sauce.   Sometimes the dishes are stews, sometimes they are a soup, other times the dish is a braise or poach of some sort.   For this dish I wanted to do something different.   I was not in the mood for a soup or stew.   I also wanted to use food I had on hand to avoid a trip to the grocery store. I had Riverence Rainbow Trout on hand.   I have prepared their steel head and rainbow in a variety of ways that we have greatly enjoyed.   Still, I wanted to do something different. In the theme of fish cooked in tomato sauce, I have previously prepared steel head trout in a bouillabaisse style sauce and in a putanesca style sauce.   Thinking about these dishes launched me in the direction of fish in marinara sauce.   From there it was a function of deciding on the accompaniments.     We have used orzo in a variety of fish dishes and like it so it seemed a natura

  Pecan Encrusted Riverence USA Rainbow Trout on Crawfish Risotto with Asparagus. I had been thinking for a while about risotto.   Caused in part, I am sure, by some frozen crawfish stock I had in my freezer.   I had made the stock, using leftover crawfish bodies, for another dish.   Not one to waste stock, I froze the remainder.   As I was thinking about the risotto, Riverence USA was kind enough to send me some of their wonderful Rainbow Trout.   The idea of serving the Rainbow Trout on the Risotto was hatched. At first, I thought about seasoning the Rainbow Trout with a Thai spice seasoning mixture and bronzing it.   After all, the crawfish stock had some spice to it.   But, then I started thinking about terroir and crawfish and Louisiana and ………..The infamous light bulb lit up and this dish was born.   The whole dish was fairly easy to produce.   I preheated the oven. I thawed/heated the stock on the stove top. While this was happening, I blanched the asparagus in