Salmon Life

“I love remembering my great-grandmother”, reminisces Melanie about Anna Chukan, who was born in Levelock in 1907. Anna was a Yupik-speaking Aleut.

“When my great-grandma, [whom I called] Umma, and [great]-grandpa, [Paul Chukan], would come to Anchorage in the winter to visit from Bristol Bay, oftentimes I would come in from playing and find Umma bent over, picking bits and lint from the carpet and putting them into a little trash bin. She would look up, smile and say, “Just like picking berries.” Melanie inherited the same love for berry-picking.

Anna was 16 when she married Paul. It was an arranged marriage, uncommon even at that time. Paul Chukan, also a Yupik-speaking Aleut, was 21 and living in the town of Naknek, at the mouth of the Naknek River, another major river feeding Kvichack Bay.

For their honeymoon, Paul and Anna took a skiff up the Naknek River to Naknek Lake, 35 miles away. Going upstream, at several shallow bends, they resorted to a rope and pulley system to pull themselves through. It was a slow ride. “[Paul] used to joke that it took [them] days to go up to the lake and only one day to [return] to town. Honeymoon was over.”

They were married for 75 years.

When Anna moved to Naknek, she began working in a cannery. She also commercial fished for sockeye salmon on Naknek River, establishing her own set net site. While Paul’s site was fourth from the river’s mouth, Anna’s was 16th. The closer a fishing site sits to the mouth of the river, the more fish fishermen can usually catch. Still, she fished enough years to qualify for a limited-entry permit.

Anna was happy to cook and did most of the cooking for the family. “She was proud to do something so substantial and basic as cooking”, remembers Melanie.

Fishing days are unpredictable. Depending on the catch, weather, tide, and gear malfunctions, days could be short and light or stretch into the night. There is little predictability. Anna knew when to have hot food ready for the returning family after a hard day of fishing.

Melanie’s mother even once said, “I don’t know how she would do it, but the food would always be ready and warm when we got home. She always had the timing right for us.”

“Umma would always have good food waiting for us when we would come back from fishing. [When] we [would sit] down [to eat], she would say to us, ‘Eat full.’”

“One of the things she would make that was always profoundly pleasing was her fish soup. The ingredients were basic: good sized cubes of salmon with their skin still on, a few pieces of spaghetti broken into the pot along with a handful of rice grains, a few rings of onion and a little bit of salt. The broth was as clear as water with drops of fish oil resting on top. It didn’t seem like it would taste like much, but the flavor was amazing.”

Perhaps the secret was freshly-caught salmon, brought by Paul straight from the net. Anna would cube up the fish, but leave the skin on for added flavor. She didn’t follow a cookbook. It was “her magic touch” that made the Naknek salmon soup so special.

“The miracle of this soup was on the order of magnitude of the fable stone soup, but better. Better because we knew that this soup came from the unconditionally loving hands of our Umma and the salmon was from the ever-giving generosity of the Naknek River, our home stream.”

Umma’s fish soup was not the only dish that stands out for Melanie from her childhood. They always had fresh bread in Naknek. “[Anna] was a really amazing bread maker, too.” When Anna would bake bread, she would give a piece of raw dough to Melanie and the other kids. “[We] would flatten the dough out, poke it with [our] fingers and bake [it] on the stovetop.” It was a special and unique experience.

Melanie shared her fish soup recipe, based on her great-grandma’s Naknek salmon soup:

1 Salmon head
1 Tail end of salmon
½ Small onion
Celery
Sea salt
Onion powder
1 Bouillon cube or 1 teaspoon of bouillon paste
2 Tablespoons of soy sauce or tamari
¼ Cup rice

Fill half a pot with cold water. Place on medium heat. Dissolve one bouillon cube or a teaspoon of bouillon paste into the heating water. Add salt and onion powder so the flavors bind for the flavor base of the soup.

Sauté onion, cut into rings or half-rings. Add celery to the onion and sauté them together. The celery should be cut crosswise into crescents across the whole celery heart; roughly seven cuts, about ¼” wide. When the sautéed onion and celery become softer, but not mushy, add them to the soup.

Add rice to the soup and roughly two tablespoons of soy sauce.

Begin preparing your salmon, but do not add it to the pot until the rice is cooked.

Rinse excess slime off the salmon head. Make sure the gills are removed from under the gill plates. Work carefully. The head is slippery and difficult to cut through. Cut it in half longitudinally, so you end up with two mirrored sides. Then cut each side into smaller pieces. Cut around the eyes to leave the eyes intact for the eye lovers. Be sure not to cut through the cheeks. Cut around them so that they remain intact. If there is blood on the pieces of the head, be sure to rinse it off with cold water. The blood will discolor the broth and taint the flavor.

Leaving the skin on, cut the tail portion of the salmon into cubes. The skin will easily come off once the salmon is cooked.

When the rice is cooked, turn the heat down to low and carefully add the pieces of salmon head into the soup pot. Use the fish eye and cartilage as a visual guide. When the center of the eye turns white and the cartilage turns from clear to milky, add the tail-end salmon cubes and remove the pot from the heat. The fish will cook very quickly.

“The cartilage in the head is easy to chew through and very flavorful. Other bits that aren’t edible will stay between your teeth when you bite down, and you can sort them out. Make sure that you suck the juice out of the bits before taking them out of your mouth. Your hands will get sticky from the richness of the oil. Just accept the fact that your meal will be a very tactile and visceral experience. Enjoy!”