It would be served with lemon, parsley, peeled boiled potatoes, and brown butter. The trout had particular meaning for me, because on our graduation trip I had sat next to my French professor and offered to filet his trout for him. In our Orthodox household we ate fish often, and I was skilled at the task. One might think that poached trout had a well-grounded reality in my inner representations. Occasionally, when at college we talked about food, I would venture a description of my favorite dish.
Trout is pan-fried.
No one poaches trout. I don't know why this trout was so important to me. In any event, I soon stopped talking about, and then thinking about, poached trout. The memory had the quality of a fantasy, a hazy daydream I might once have had. Six years after I left Switzerland, I made my first return visit.