Pan-fried trout with cumin and a cornmeal crust

I’m going through a cumin phase right now. I’ve been making fried chick peas, black bean pretty much everything, Sudanese red-lentil stew with cumin and even cumin-laced salad dressings. I’m not sure why the spice has so taken over my imagination.

The round, aromatic flavor with hints of bitter and wood appeals to me, yes. But it may have more to do with cumin’s steady supportive strength in a dish. It’s not a show boat of a spice, requiring all kinds of balancing acts and multi-layered shenanigans. Cumin anchors the base without being boring. It can stand on its own or hold everything else together. Basically, I know that if I’ve got cumin, I’ll be OK. And at the moment, that’s the feeling I’m looking for in the kitchen and, come to think of it, in the rest of my life as well.

A few nights ago, my cumin dalliances went beyond the beans and vegetable dishes I had been messing with. I’d picked up three large trout fillets and was, as usual, short on time and bereft of a plan. Cumin? Why not? Some vague memory of some Sephardic cookbook on some far away shelf was dangling a cumin-fried fish recipe just beyond my mind’s eye. The details wouldn’t surface, but, hey, I could run with that.

I tossed the fish with olive oil, lemon, cumin, a wee bit of garlic power and another wee bit of adobo, salt and pepper. Then coated it with cornmeal and pan fried it. This is a keeper. Even my daughter Rae, who swears she doesn’t like most fish, ate a huge piece.

Here is the recipe. The precise measurements aren't that important. You get the idea.