Rice and Peas with Trout

Not quite a soup, but something closer to a broth stew, this dish is a quick way to add together some easy, edible and healthy favorites.

 
The recipe itself calls for a variety of ingredients that could be eliminated in order to simplify, like chopped onions, fresh thyme, white wine, horseradish or even parmesan cheese.  I chopped up half an onion to sauté with oil and butter then added what is called arborio rice, a short grain Italian rice, which is fat, starchy and very absorptive when cooked, into the mix along with three cups of chicken stock to soak, and some good frozen peas to cook.

Along the way, the recipe calls for cooked trout, a difficult ingredient to find unless you have your own private catch stockpiled in the freezer. At our grocery store, fresh white fish of any kind comes and goes, but there is always the frozen Alaskan cod available. I defrosted that, seasoned it with lemon pepper, drizzled with oil, and broiled until it started to flake under the heat, then draped those pieces over the arborio rice combination.  I didn't add parmesan cheese, and I didn't add horseradish – what I was left with though was a very clean three part hot meal of peas, rice and fish.  We all agreed trout would have "added" that little extra fine-tuning, but will have to wait for next time.