Just start typing...

Salmon Life

Search
  • Stories
    • Lifestyle
    • Legacy
    • Heritage
    • Passion
    • Freedom
    • Stewardship
    • Nourishment
    • Camaraderie
    • Enterprise
    • Ingenuity
  • Share A Story

The Right Kind of Hungry

The Story of Julia O’Malley
Legacy Nourishment
generationsromanceconnectionsmindfulnessfellowshipsustenancenurtureFamilychildrenrelationships

I will give you my salmon recipe. It is simple, delicious, and particularly impressive considering some of the not impressive salmon recipes in my genetic code. Take my grandmother’s which I won’t give you, not because it is secret, but because I can’t encourage cooking in a dishwasher. All I’m going to say is that it involves Saran Wrap, the top rack, and the sanitize cycle.

Some of my eight uncles and aunts on my father’s side, the older ones, say the dishwasher story can’t be true. But others, the younger ones, saw it with their own eyes. It’s weird, sure, but, they told me, the fish comes out of the dishwasher impossibly tender. And that’s what everybody wants.

Some of my eight uncles and aunts on my father’s side, the older ones, say the dishwasher story can’t be true. But others, the younger ones, saw it with their own eyes. It’s weird, sure, but, they told me, the fish comes out of the dishwasher impossibly tender. And that’s what everybody wants.

My parents tell me that when they were growing up in the little town that was Anchorage in the late 1950s and early ’60s, people didn’t eat grilled salmon all summer long the way we do now. Certainly, some people fished. Some people smoked salmon or canned it. But it wasn’t usual to find fresh salmon in the grocery stores. Salmon wasn’t the go-to. It wasn’t as common as, say, frozen fillet of sole purchased at the commissary, which was served at the O’Malley house on Fridays with regularity.

When I think about eating salmon, dinner at Aunt Barbara’s house is the first thing that comes to mind. Aunt Barbara, number two in the line-up of O’Malley children (Dad is number three), somehow became a devoted fisherwoman. Devoted may be the wrong word. Zealous might be better. She likes nothing better than to be photographed with a bloody fish in her embrace. And unlike her mother, my grandmother, she knows how to cook it.

Barbara’s table is where I often taste the first catch of the season. Many years it is spring king, thick and fatty. Her fish recipe, like mine, is simple, a variation on one you find all across Alaska. It involves a splash of soy sauce and perhaps thin rounds of lemon and a sprinkle of dill. The fish goes to the grill on a sheet of foil. Always, it is eaten around a crowded table, always with rice, hot sourdough bread, butter, steamed broccoli, and hollandaise sauce.

Summer in Alaska is like no other place. You might compare the feeling of spring coming on to that of driving a really nice car off a lot, a car that you bought outright with your own money after years spent riding a bus. There is a grand sense of liberation as the light returns and crocus buds appear, an intoxicated appreciation for all that is green and alive. If that feeling could have a flavor, it would be salmon, perfectly cooked, hot off the grill. The perfectly cooked part is harder than it seems, but stay with me, I can help.

Fresh salmon is Alaska’s food, our most famous culinary export, one of our few proud flags on the world’s food map. Alaska Airlines flies the first batch of Copper River reds to Seattle in a “Salmon-Thirty-Salmon” jet, painted to look like a king salmon. Photos move on the Associated Press wire soon after: a fat, cold fish being carried down a red carpet to a line of chefs on the Seattle tarmac. The fish soon appears on menus of the country’s finest restaurants and in the seafood cases at Whole Foods. The price of Copper River salmon in the spring might easily top thirty dollars a pound.

Fresh salmon is Alaska’s food.

But in Alaska, exquisite fish isn’t that rare or expensive. In fact, it is free once you get to a place where you can catch it. In Anchorage, anybody with a pole can walk to Ship Creek downtown and come away with a bright fish. The beaches of the Kenai River, the closest dipnet fishery to Anchorage, draw scores of city people, many from Anchorage’s new and growing ethnic communities who join the crowd of longtime fishermen with their waders and long-handled nets. On a short walk along the shore you can hear Samoan, Tagalog, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Lao, Hmong, and Spanish. On any given night in Anchorage in the summertime, salmon is roasting on a thousand grills, it’s being rolled into sushi and flaked into tacos. Salmon here is the people’s food. And so long as our rivers and oceans remain healthy, everyone can be fed.

I’ve pulled in exactly one salmon in my thirty-six years. I was sixteen and Aunt Barbara was my guide. We rose early to drive to the Kasilof River, listening to oldies on the radio until we got out of range. Aunt Barbara chain-smoked. We ate nothing except a roll of Sweet Tarts. Fishing on a full stomach = bad luck.

Following Barb was an education in superstitious fish rituals. As I drove, I shared the front seat with two cantaloupes. When we arrived at the home of the guide who would pilot us downriver, Barbara gave him the melons. I knew enough to understand it was not so much a gesture of friendliness as an offering.

Barbara thought hard before selecting a seat in the open skiff, her mind working through the various treats of other lucky seats in other boats. She went left side, close to the guide. Soon we set off into the river and drifted dreamily for several hours, the guide gently rowing as we bounced our hooks on the river floor, each baited with a cluster of hot-pink eggs.

Then, like a lightning strike, came a tug. You can’t forget that sensation, the pleasure of the weight at the end of the line and the wave of adrenaline. The boat came alive, everybody shouting to set the hook! and reel-reel-reel! I did my best. Soon the fish appeared, first a flash of silver, then a ribbon of muscle just beneath the surface. In a flurry of shouting and netting, it was in with us. Eyes wide. Needle teeth. Red fans visible inside the gill flaps. If I remember correctly, after some coaching, I clubbed it myself. I totally enjoyed every minute of that trip, but I have a secret: I have never had much of a desire to catch a fish again.

There is no complicated reason why. I’d just much rather spend my time with fish cooking and eating it.

It’s hard to be Alaskan and feel this way. I concealed it for many years. When I first met my wife, Sara, fourteen years ago, I spent hours in her skiff off Douglas Island near Juneau, circling in the water, motor purring, trolling for salmon. Her boat was called Fish Wife, and I watched her expertly back it down the ramp into the water with awe.

She was always the one with the lucky seat, pulling in fish after fish. Meanwhile, as if the fish could sense my lack of interest, I never got much more than a nibble. She kept her fillet knife sharp, and I watched her pull it through our catch over and over that summer, skimming it along the backbone, making a precise cut through the silver scales.

My fish recipe starts at this moment.

The fish, to be perfect, must be impossibly fresh, preferably hours from the water, or even less. It must be filleted almost immediately, with confidence and a knife so sharp, if you were to slip, it would slice you to the bone.

Everybody has a favorite kind of salmon. Some like fatty, increasingly hard-to-get king in the springtime; others, mellow, silver in the fall. I like red salmon best, specifically from the Copper River, with flesh the color and translucency of ripe highbush cranberries.

This isn’t the easiest fish to obtain. It must be netted from aswift, cold river hours away from town.

 

I might love reds best because I grew up eating them. Back then, we relied on my uncle Bob for fish. He is the husband of my mother’s sister Alicia. He is British and old enough to remember World War II. He was a petroleum engineer who came to Alaska to work for ARCO during the pipeline.

Bob packed to go fishing meticulously. His tidy lists, written in pencil, sat on the counter until each item was checked off. I remember coolers marked with duct tape labels and what seemed to be an entire duffle bag filled with peanut M&Ms.

Sometimes, after he’d left, a call would come in with the number of fish he’d netted. Dozens often, but sometimes none. The possibility of failure made the catch all the more precious.

If he got a haul, then there was an assembly line in the kitchen, fillet after fillet, packed into bags, vacuum-sealed, frozen. A few filets would be distributed among the family. And always, afterward, a big fishing victory dinner. A salad of romaine dressed with balsamic. Grilled zucchini. The salmon marinated in Yoshida’s teriyaki sauce or coated with olive oil and a shake of Tony Chachere’s Creole seasoning.

Soon afterward, Alicia would start up the Little Chief smoker in the yard.

Alicia died years ago, but Bob still goes to the Copper. Now the next generation of the family makes the trip. Sara goes. So does my cousin’s husband, John. They stay up all night waiting for the rush of fish. Sometimes they tie themselves to the bank to guard against the current.

When Sara gets home, her dad comes over and they set up a table in the driveway, cleaning, filleting, and rinsing each fish with the garden hose. Then the filets come to me. I pack the bags and run the vacuum sealer, just like Alicia did, whirring in the kitchen well into the never-dark night. I put some into the freezer, but the majority we give away.

Fish is best when eaten fresh (in fact, I don’t really like it frozen), and so I’d rather just share it. Maybe that is my superstitious fish ritual. Fresh fish is my offering, given away in hopes that I might get some in return later, when I am without. So far, it has worked.

My cousin Tanya, Bob and Alicia’s daughter and John’s wife, has an amazing way with fish. She makes salmon poke, a Hawaiian-style delicacy: raw fish, straight from the freezer, cubed and mixed with tamari, sesame oil, chili paste, and onions. The recipe is killer, but her best recipe begins with a fresh fillet, hot off the grill, smothered with fresh-chopped green onions. She drizzles hot peanut oil over it. You can hear the oil sizzle as it hits the fish and wilts the onions. She follows that with a splash of hot soy sauce. Serve this with sticky rice from the Vietnamese restaurant down the street and you can’t top it. This is almost my favorite salmon recipe, but not quite.

If I am begin honest, my salmon recipe isn’t really even mine, it’s Sara’s. The first time I ate it was all those years ago on North Douglas Island, after one of our circular tours on the Fish Wife. We took our hour-old fish back to the house and made a round of calls to invite friends to dinner. And then we started up the grill. It was propane, with cast-iron grates, wire brushed as clean as possible and well-seasoned with oil. This is, in my opinion, the best way to cook. I never let fresh fish near an oven.

I have learned the methods Sara taught me. Always give the grill time to develop a nice even heat but don’t put the fire on full blast. It should be heated to medium, so that your hand can hover over the grates for just a few seconds before it becomes too uncomfortable.

Never put the fish on a sheet pan. Pour a capful of olive oil over it and generously sprinkle it with sea salt. That’s it. When the grill is ready, lay the fillet directly on the grate, skin side down. Close the top.

Seems simple, right? Don’t be fooled. Next comes the hardest and most essential part of my recipe. It is not an ingredient, but technique: to experience the sacred deliciousness of fresh salmon, impossibly moist, and perfect, you just not overcook it. This is really hard.

Everybody overcooks fish. That changes the flavors of its delicate oils and the texture. Done wrong, fish is flaky and bitter. People eat so much like this, they become accustomed. It is the norm. They don’t know what they are missing. Done right, grilled fresh salmon’s texture is closer to custard, its flavor mild, sweet, and faintly briny.

I can’t give you a cooking time once you have the fish on the grill, because every fish is a different size, but the key is to be vigilant. Err on the side of rawness. Also, for the fish to taste most delicious, you have to be the right kind of hungry. You should be hungry the way you only get in May, on a day when the sun feels warm and you can smell sap, and teenagers skateboard by with no coats on. It should have been months since you last had a piece of salmon. You’ll know it’s right, because you’ll smell your neighbors grilling, too, for the first time since last year.

You’ll want to grill some asparagus, too. And set a pan of rice going on the stove.

You might stand at the grill in flip-flops on grass that isn’t quite greened up. (you are free to do this with a beer in your hand.) Check the fish just about the time you start to notice your feet are cold, because even though it’s sunny, there is still a chill. If you’ve hit it right, you can tell, because when you take a fork and slip it between the layers of flesh, you will see that in the center of the fish it is not quite done and is instead just slightly translucent. With a long spatula, separate the fish from the skin on the grill. Place it on a warm plate. Serve immediately.

If you’ve hit it right, you can tell.
Legacy Nourishment
generationsromanceconnectionsmindfulnessfellowship
Story by

Julia O’Malley

Julia O’Malley is a freelance journalist and the Atwood Chair of Journalism at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Previously, she spent nine years at the Anchorage Daily News as a reporter and columnist. She lives in Anchorage and blogs about food and culture in Alaska at juliaomalley.media.

Photography by

Ash Adams

Ash Adams is a freelance editorial and commercial photographer who specializes in environmental portraiture and documentary. Adams studied photojournalism at OU’s Vicsom School of Design and is currently based in Anchorage, Alaska.

This story was originally published in Made of Salmon: Alaska Stories from The Salmon Project.

<
< Prev

The Story Continues

Next >

Thank You, Swimmer

>

You Might Also Like

Depths of Thought

Lifestyle Stewardship
backyardchildrenway of lifeadventureFamily

What the Day Brings

Freedom Lifestyle
backyardcommitmentconnectednessfinding oneselfgratitude

Salmon Grown

Heritage Legacy
childrenconnectednessdevotionFamilygenerations

Coho & My Year of Living Vulnerably

Lifestyle Nourishment
Communityconnectednessway of lifesustenancefuture

A Marriage, Built on Salmon

Lifestyle Passion
FamilyromancebackyardcommitmentSubsistence
See More

Salmon Life

Sign up for our newsletter

© 2019 Salmon Life. All Rights Reserved. Terms & Conditions

An initiative of the Salmon Project
Find Out More