The Dinner Files

It was so good that Ernest asked why, exactly, it was so delicious.

I explained how the salmon came from a place that is very good for salmon, that the people who caught it took such good care of it. He looked over at me like I was a complete fool.

“I don’t think that’s why it tastes good, Mama. I think it’s because you took it off the grill at the right time.” Snap.

If that’s your point-of-view too, here you go – I grilled it using this super-simple method: I heat the grill to a medium heat (you can hold your hand about an inch over the grill grate for 3 to 4 seconds), I sprinkle the fish with salt, I brush vegetable oil on the grill grate and the fish skin, put the fish skin-down on the grill, I cover the grill, and I cook it undisturbed until the fish is done to my liking (I go by 10 minutes minimum, and figure about 10 minutes per inch if it’s thicker than an inch). If the fish has no skin or you’re worried about sticking, simply do the same thing but put the fish on a piece of tin foil with plenty of small holes poked in it. With salmon I always buy skin-on and cook it directly on the grill to crisp it up because if there is anything my dashing husband and inquisitive son love more than crispy crunchy salmon skin I don’t know what it is.

You can add marinades or rubs or whatever you dig, but did you notice that the fish does not get flipped? That, I think, is the key to happy fish grilling. And those fish-grilling baskets? I don’t have a place to put one, but when I tried them in the Sunset test kitchen I was not impressed. Sure, the fish didn’t stick to the grill, but it always made a bit of a mess in the basket itself.

So I grilled this Copper River sockeye salmon using the above method and it turned out perfectly – we all agreed (partly because I took my dashing husband’s fillet off the grill way before mine or Ernest’s because he likes his salmon pretty much not cooked). And next to it? It’s this fattoush salad minus the feta and olives. The lemony dressing and cumin seeds were fab with the plain grilled salmon.

One morning there was a break in the rain during my short time in Cordova. I pulled on some sensible shoes and a wool plaid shirt, grabbed a cup of coffee and my camera, and took a wee walk around the town. As I headed up across from the two real estate offices in town, I noticed something bright and red and shiny.

Regular readers will know I have had luck this summer foraging wild berries. Blueberries and raspberries have filled my breakfasts and desserts for weeks now. I bring pints when I show up somewhere for dinner. I keep rubber boots and containers in the car just in case I spot a new patch.

These berries in Cordova looked like raspberries on steroids (or was it just the almost 24-hour daylight they’d been getting?). But I wasn’t sure what they were so I took a picture and went on my way. Back at the Inn I showed locals my picture and was assured that my real guess was right: these were salmonberries.

I was excited beyond belief. Real wild salmonberries! I headed back out and barely heard the woman at the front desk tell me that there was a huge patch across the street, but that those got dusty from the road and I should try heading to…. I was already heading back to my patch, which was really just a bush or two. I ate a lovely little rain-rinsed portion before heading back for breakfast.

It’s the same structure as a raspberry – with a hollow center. Some people find them too seedy, but I like that in a berry. They don’t have the most distinctive or deep flavor in the worlds of berries, but instead have a sort of general and vague “berry” flavor, favoring the tarter, more astringent side of the berry spectrum.

During the course of the next two days I realized how idiotic I must have looked being so excited about finding a few dozen salmonberries in town, and how silly I must have seemed to the few people that drove by me that morning snapping my pictures and bothering to pick such a find.

Salmonberry bramble were everywhere. Prolific, berry-laden branches in patches turned up everywhere I went – at the picnic site near Child’s Glacier, in people’s backyards, along every road in and out of town.

I’ve heard many explanations for the name “salmonberries” – they grow near streams where salmon swim up to spawn, some berries are salmon-flesh colored (they range from golden to bright red) – but the best reason, to my mind, is that the really large and ripe berries look like clusters of salmon roe. [Warning: sensitive readers may not want to scroll down too far. I've been told that some people find the second picture less than appetizing.]

Compare these berries -

to the salmon roe in the center towards the bottom here -

Salmon carpaccio with fennel relish. I know a lot about this dish. As I was eating it I had the pleasure of telling my dining companions that, in fact, I had caught the fish.

“How psyched are you?” and other enthusiastic confirmations followed, despite the fact that the Cordovans I was sitting with all eat salmon they catch themselves on a regular basis (about twice a week was the average in my informal poll, but that’s just counting dinner; if you add in lunch the weekly average more than doubles due to the apparent popularity of salmon burgers).

I should clarify one teeny tiny fact: When I say that I caught the fish I really mean that Thea Thomas, a Cordova salmon fisherman, caught it while I was on her boat.

I’d like to say I helped, but that would be a gross exaggeration. “Didn’t hinder too terribly much” is probably a more accurate assessment. While Thea donned some intense rubber gear and worked in the driving rain and freezing wind, I poked my head out of the heated cabin every now and again to try and get a decent picture without my camera getting too wet. In doing so I often asked if she could hold still for just a moment. And another moment while I wiped the lens. And another moment while I adjusted the angle. Oh, and just one more because the light seems a wee bit better at this part of the ocean an inch from where we were before.

At one point I asked her if she normally fished in such weather. To her credit the expression that betrayed how naive my question was barely flitted across her face before she said that yes, when the fishing was open and good she did indeed work in the rain. She did not add “silly city girl” to the end of her answer, which, in retrospect, was an impressive sign of her friendliness and general good character.

Thea, like many other Copper River salmon fisherman, uses gillnets. Like most of her cohort, she works alone (although her delightfully polite young nephew visits every summer to work as a deckhand for a bit). Unlike most of her cohort who spend their fishing days on gun-metal gray vessels with small cabins in which they often live for weeks at a time, Thea works on a cheery and brilliantly blue boat with a small cabin in which she often lives for weeks at a time.

The salmon she catches – the season moves from the king salmon in May through sockeyes and then cohos (called silvers by those who fish them) before the season ends in September – are trying to get up into the Copper River to spawn. And who can blame them? It’s a little chilly but otherwise looks like a lovely place to raise a family.

They have lots of fat built up for the fresh water journey, during which they stop eating and use a lot of energy (the Copper River is long and difficult to swim up even for a fish driven to swim up it, hence the prized richness and quality of Copper Rive Salmon). Once they spawn, they die. As they go upstream they start looking like, well, like they are going to die. Bits of their flesh starts flaking off. Sections of their bodies turn ghostly white. (In a perfect-circle-of-nature way, their rotting flesh will serve as a protein source for the hatchlings they die to spawn. That might sound a bit horrific, but don’t we all feed off our parents in one way or another?)

Out in the Prince William Sound and Gulf of Alaska, however, they’re still in salt water and fattening themselves up. So Thea set out her net, let it sit, hauled it back, and started picking off salmon (and a few flounder that were promptly returned to their ocean home) as they came in.

Then she posed for a picture that – and I’m just guessing here – isn’t a normal part of the routine as she cut the salmon’s gills to bleed it.

Her net was still coming in, there was work to do. The bleeding salmon was put on the floor, where it slid to my feet. Aggressive predator no more.

We brought our tiny catch of three sockeyes back to Cordova and had them hand-filleted by an expert, who can fillet a salmon faster than I can shoot with my camera, at Copper River Seafoods.

[Side note: Did you know there are machines that can fillet fish? I did not and found that fact fascinating. They do not, I was assured, do as good a job as a person, they just do it faster. Custom orders, fillets for smoking, and other situations where looks and super-duper premium quality matter – such as my dinner – are still filleted by hand.]

From there the salmon went to the chefs preparing dinner who chose to pound the living daylights out of it to make carpaccio. To their credit, the fish was so fresh and well-handled, without bruising or damage, that it was perfect to take advantage of that way.

[Another side note: I've heard from many experts that salmon should be frozen if you're going to eat it raw because of concerns about parasitic worms that the freezing kills. So far I appear to be parasite-free. Fingers crossed!]

My beef, so to speak, with the salmon carpaccio was the pounding. To be more specific, it was the noise from the pounding. It was loud, steady, distracting and it took place less than 15 feet and one all together too thin wall away from where I sat trying to follow a detailed technical discussion of cutting-edge fish bleeding practices on one side of me while asking questions (questions that would qualify me for enrollment in Salmon 101, Fishing 101, and Alaska 101 courses if such a placement exam were given) of a very cheerful and patient soul.

I learned this about fishermen: When they work, they work hard. Most of them I met were obsessive about the quality of the fish they caught and went to great pains to treat them well.

And then there are the boats. These things are as neat as pins. Clean as whistles. Exceptions exist, I’m sure, but I didn’t see any. They are named and cared for and tinkered with and, if my experience is any example, pointed out in the harbor with pride to new acquaintances. I kept up my end of such conversations with this question: Is it a bow-picker or a stern-picker? Feel free to use it as you see fit.

That salmon carpaccio began as a 4-lb. sockeye salmon headed for the Copper River. It was caught at Strawberry Flats by Thea on her fiberglass bow-picker in some gnarly freezing rain. Ireneo filleted it at Bill and Pip and Scott’s place. Adam and Dan and Trevor pounded, cut, and plated it. I think Marley helped. Beth ordered the fennel. I ate it while laughing with Bert and Mike and Robert.

All of that is to naught, of course, unless it’s tasty. Food can have all the backstory in the world, but if it doesn’t taste good you’re still not going to want to eat it.

I ate all my carpaccio. And would have happily eaten seconds. And thirds.

[Final side note: I don't want to forget Cheryl, who took the carpaccio picture at top and so without whom this post could not exist.]

I spent a few days in Cordova, Alaska learning about Copper River salmon. I thought I knew a fair amount about salmon before I went. I could name the five types of Pacific salmon we get on the West Coast, I knew the general life cycle of salmon, and I certainly knew a myriad of ways to prepare and eat salmon. Hell, I’ve smoked it on my stove top, I’ve grilled it in corn leaves, I’ve made more gravlax than you could shake a stick at, I’ve even witnessed my New York City born-and-bred mother-in-law boss the fish cutter at Zabar’s around and make him get out a new piece of Nova. I now know a lot more about salmon. A lot. Really almost a frightening amount.

The other thing I learned about, however, is Cordova. I sort of fell in love with the place. You know how some places are great to visit but the thought of moving there doesn’t even cross your mind whereas others tempt you with visions of a different life? For some reason I’m always tempted by places that get quite cold and dark in the winter. Perhaps it’s the Norwegian in me, or a childhood largely spent in Minnesota so that dark cold somehow feels homey and inviting (or I just appreciate how glorious summer feels after that freezing blanket of winter). Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and Bergen, Norway, for example, loom large in my fantasy path-not-taken life. I’ll now add Cordova to the list.

The trip had several highlights, but I’ll just talk about the final one here. On Sunday night I had the pleasure of eating dinner around the kitchen island at Mikal Berry’s amazingly cozy and serene craftsman bungalow while the incessant “liquid sunshine” as the locals call it leaked from the sky.

This corn, chile, and salmon chowder would have been fabulous enough, but both it and the homecured gravlax she served beforehand were made with salmon she caught herself. On her commercial salmon fishing boat. There aren’t many women commercial fishermen in Cordova (or other places, I imagine, I just happen to know only 6 to 8 of the over 500 permit holders in Cordova are women – I met three of them – more on that tomorrow).

The chowder was followed by a homemade panna cotta garnished with rhubarb compote she harvested and made herself and blueberries and salmonberries (those things that look like giant raspberries) she picked from her garden between courses.

With the panna cotta Mikal served her homemade cranberry cordial. I make a cranberry liqueur of which I was once very proud. Those days are over. I need to relearn how to make it. Mikal’s blew mine away. Of course she starts by gathering wild cranberries in the fall….

It was a calm, easy, homey meal that especially hit the spot. As much as the weather was less than sunny, so too was my constitution that day, what with the previous night having been spent out drinking with a lethal combination of fishermen and chefs. Honestly, I don’t know who is more trouble. Or more fun. I am most seriously out of partying practice. Plus, from what I gathered, bars in Alaska close when everyone leaves, so there is nothing to send you home except your own good sense which, of course, by that time you’ve completely lost. I didn’t even follow my own hard and fast rules to avoid hangover disaster: Don’t change drinks, Don’t change venues. No good comes from either one. That moment when someone says “Let’s go to The Alaskan!” when you’re already in a perfectly fine bar or other drinking venue? That’s the time to go home. You know what I did instead of going home? I recruited people to join us. Mistakes were made. Fun was had. Lessons were learned, again.