The Dish: Smoked trout dip at Picnic restaurant in Philadelphia

for the dish and there's a dip that our friend Sarah Bloomquist loves so much that she asked us to head to picnic in Kensington to get that recipe. Yeah I accepted this assignment. It is their smoked trout dip and when I went for it and tried it for the first time I fully understood the hype. I know why she loves this. So lucky for all of us the executive chef shared all the creamy delicious secrets to one of their hottest dishes. Would you say this is one of your best sellers? Absolutely yeah there's no way this dish is going anywhere. This is picnics smoked trout dip. It's fun because it's shareable you can kind of build your own and yeah it makes it really in line with what we do here. Executive chef Joe Mooney says it's picnicky and perfect for the vibe. Like a huge indoor picnic. Yes exactly yeah. Come here no matter what the weather is. Exactly. Every dish adds a little gourmet touch to a picnic staple. Shareable fun you know playful when I think of a picnic we we bring things that are prepared ahead of time right so you know definitely maybe some smoked fish some salami we have cheeses as well. Up front there's a bottle shop. You make it feel like a real picnic and grab the bottle and bring it to the table. That's the whole idea exactly. Where you can also pick up some of those beautiful cheeses and peruse the oysters. We have a really great variety of oysters we also do rotisserie chicken lots of small plates and of course natural wine as well. Their signature organic rotisserie chicken is cooked over charcoal and comes with six dipping sauces. That's special. Yeah yeah really good. You must have had fun with this. Yeah we had a lot of fun with these yeah absolutely. But we came for the secrets to that smoked trout dip. One of our most popular dishes yeah we're so we bring in a really nice steelhead trout this is it here so steelhead trout it's very similar to salmon. Cured and smoked in-house. We actually hot smoke this so completely cooks the fish. From there it's very simple we just add some dairy we start with a little bit of cream cheese here and then from there we'll add a little bit of creme fraiche. Okay. Creme fraiche is just a cultured cream you can pretty much find it in most grocery stores now. We'll just kind of work this in here just like this. I can already see why this is good. Yeah exactly lots of dairy yes exactly and you know it's it's a very classic combination if you think of like a bagel with cream cheese and smoked fish. If you're making it at home simply buy any pre-smoked fish you like. You could use smoked trout would work great herring would work great. Just flake it up and fold it in. And then we'll just finish with like a squeeze of lemon. Perfect. A little bit of salt. Chef serves it with pickled shallot and chopped chives and some sliced cucumber. And just your classic saltine. Yeah you know kind of going back to what would you bring on a picnic you know I'd probably bring some saltines with me. Yeah wow. I know why you cannot take this off the menu. Yeah. It's so fresh too.