Welcome to the most existentially confused dish you’ll ever serve – a recipe born from what can only be described as a diplomatic summit between a very lost trout and a Sicilian pastry chef who clearly never learned the word “no.” This is what happens when someone asks “But what if we made cannoli… fishy?” and nobody in the kitchen had the courage to stage an intervention. The result is a delicate dance between buttery trout mousse that somehow convinced itself it belongs in a crispy pastry shell, all while pistachios stand around like confused wedding guests wondering how they ended up at this particular party. It’s fancy enough to impress your most pretentious dinner guests, weird enough to become the evening’s main conversation topic, and surprisingly delicious enough that you’ll question everything you thought you knew about the boundaries between land, sea, and Italian dessert traditions. Serve with a straight face and a good story about how you “discovered” this in a tiny restaurant in an imaginary fishing village.
Ingredients
For the mousse:
- 2 oz plain cream cheese
- 1 tbsp mayonnaise
- 1 tbsp capers in brine drained
- 2 tsp chopped fresh dill (or substitute 1 teaspoon dried)
- ½ tsp hot sauce
- ¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper
- Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
For the cannoli:
- 2 tbsp finely chopped pistachios or more as needed
- 6 to 10 prepared mini cannoli shells
- roe for garnish
Instructions
- Let’s make some mousse!
- In a food processor, combine the trout, cream cheese, mayonnaise, capers, dill, hot sauce, pepper and lemon zest and process until they become one.
- Transfer the mousse to a zip-top bag and push as much air out as possible before sealing.
- Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and up to overnight. The mousse, not you.
- Cannoli time!
- Place the chopped pistachios in a small bowl.
- Cut off a small corner, about 1/2 inch, of the zip-top bag and discard the corner.
- Pick up a cannoli shell (“Hey. What’s a nice cannoli shell like you doin’ in a dive like dis?”), insert the cut corner into one end and gently squeeze until the mousse reaches the edge of the shell.
- Turn the shell around and fill the other side.
- Dip the exposed mousse on each side into the pistachios, pressing gently so they adhere.
- Garnish each cannoli with 1/2 teaspoon of roe, if desired, and serve.
- EAT IT!
