Alaskan Wild Salmon

Bonnie: Orgasmic.

Seriously. It’s the only word to accurately describe the flavor of salmon cooked less than 24 hours out of icy Alaskan waters.

That’s a pleasure I’ve been fortunate to experience more than once. Don’t misinterpret—fresh salmon is delicious—but really fresh salmon is unparalleled.

My first arrived on ice in the mail (one of the benefits of being a food editor), the salmon having been blithely swimming the day before without a clue it would end up on my plate before the sun set the next day.

I decided to grill five pounds of the salmon almost naked, that is with just a sprinkling of salt, freshly ground pepper and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil so the true flavor would come through. I wanted us to sample some of the King (Chinook), Sockeye (Red), Coho (Silver), Pink (Humpback) and Keta (Chum) and have lots left to create some PlannedOvers—a word I coined decades ago for planned leftovers.

Silly me.

Eric, my friend Lyn Howe and I sat at the table with a platter overflowing with freshly cooked salmon in front of us.

After one bite, we ate almost silently except for some soft utterances.

“Mmmm.”

“Ahhhhh.”

“Ooooh.”

No one spoke until the serving platter and our plates were bare. We were almost embarrassed at how much salmon we each consumed. Almost. One fish was tastier than the next; the King was our favorite; Sockeye and Coho next. Each had a distinct flavor with the richest being the King, which has the highest oil content of the five.

The following year when Laura Fleming, Communications Director for Alaska Seafood Marketing, invited me to come to Alaska to learn even more about the industry and go salmon fishing, I couldn’t resist. Pollyanna that I am, I booked the red-eye home and invited friends for dinner the evening of my return to experience what Lyn, Eric and I had had–really fresh salmon, which I had planned to catch.

Need I share how everyone on the boat chuckled when I reeled in my 1-pound catch?

“We can stop at the supermarket on the way home,” someone giggled.

The laughing stopped when I wrestled in a 16-pound King salmon—which, I might add, won me the prize for the biggest catch of the day — an Alaskan Seafood black, fleece-lined windbreaker that I still proudly wear spouting my fishing story to anyone who’ll listen!

Those who could make it for the grilled dinner the night I arrived home still talk about that fresh salmon, although I was too tired from the red-eye to recall much of anything, other than the oohs and aahs around me as I struggled to keep my eyes open.

Second best to eating fish right out of the water is wild fresh—never been frozen—fish available widely from about May to September.

Earlier this summer at one of our organized potluck meals—where everyone brings an assigned dish—about a dozen of us dined on a soy-sesame glazed salmon while sitting on a veranda overlooking the Connecticut Sound.

When asked, Ellen Weiss explained that she marinated salmon fillets in equal parts soy sauce, sesame oil and maple syrup after she had pressed lots of minced garlic and ginger onto the salmon. After grilling she then sprinkled minced scallions on top. Simple. Simply delicious.

Wine aficionado Woodie Weiss served two fabulous wines–one after the other– with the salmon. The first was a magnum of 1994 Silver Oak Napa Valley Cabernet.

“Napa is the more limited of the two Silver Oak wines,” explained Woodie, “the other being Alexander Valley. 1994 was a great vintage in Napa.”

The second magnum was Paul Jaboulet Ainee’s Hermitage “La Chapelle” 1998. “It’s one of the most prestigious wines of the Rhone area. Truly magnificent wine.”

Lucky us.

When I called to verify that I remembered the recipe correctly so I could share it, Ellen pointed me to an online recipe from cookbook author and friend Steven Raichlen. Here’s my adapted version of that for those of you who may need more specifics:

Grilled Marinated Salmon In a large, shallow dish, whisk together 1/4 c soy sauce, 3 T maple syrup and 3 T Asian sesame oil. Add four 8-ounce salmon fillets; turn to coat. Press some thinly sliced fresh ginger and 2 minced garlic cloves into the salmon. Refrigerate, covered, 2 hours.

Drain the marinade into a saucepan and boil over high heat until syrupy, about 3 minutes. Strain into a small bowl.

Grill the salmon over high heat until done. Spoon glaze on top, sprinkle with 2 thinly sliced scallions. Makes four servings.

And while we’re talking salmon, there are endless possibilities for cooking Alaskan wild salmon – from cedar plank to grilled, broiled, sauteed, baked, poached or steamed. The only thing you can do wrong is overcook it.

Hey guys, how do you prepare salmon? Or to paraphrase cousin Barbara who would call me at dinner time as her personal live cookbook and ask, “If I were a salmon fillet, how would you cook me?”

Bryan: Salmon is a food I can ramble on about for pages; I love it in many different forms. It may be the most versatile fish I know, able to stand up to almost any cooking method you can devise and delicious for breakfast or dinner. Truly fresh salmon, like the Alaskan product we are so luckily now exposed to, is a divine treat that recalls a time past where dinner may have been pulled from the river. For the sake of time, I will let you know about only my favorite presentations of this wonderful fish. The first is what I like to call breakfast salmon (smoked or cured). Smoking is a VERY hard process to do at home (and not something I would recommend), but curing is very simple and produces a Scandinavian treat known as gravlax. Basically, the recipe calls for combining salt, sugar, pepper and dill with the raw fish and wrapping it to ‘marinate’ for two-days, that’s it! Gravlax is perfect with cream cheese or eggs for breakfast or as an appetizer on crackers. Try it once and you’ll be hooked. For dinner, gravlax is just not hearty enough, and I find that a pan-roasted fillet is my favorite. To do so, start the meat in a very hot pan to sear the flesh and hold in the juices, then finished it in the oven to cook through. Marinades and recipes aside, this is my preferred method of heat for this hearty fish. The skin and flesh are strong and able to stand up to the high heat of a pan-sear, while the fatty fish just melts as it’s finished in the oven.

Eric: I can recall the day that my mother arrived back from her trip to Alaska, a smile adorning her face from ear to ear, with the tall-tale of her 16-pound King salmon, and the battle she had fought in order to catch it…

Now that I’ve worked in restaurants and have had to deal with scaling, boning and filleting a myriad of fish, and salmon is my favorite. I was looking forward to having this behemoth of a fish on my cutting board, knowing that it had been swimming in the Alaskan waters just a few hours before, but to my dismay, my mother told me that it was much easier to transport the catch after it had been filleted. Now, as much as I wanted to cut a nice fillet from this fish, my second-most desire was to just grab a pan and start cooking.

I, like my brother, have had a love affair with salmon ever since my first bite into a lightly toasted onion bagel thinly covered with cream cheese and layered with red onion, tomato and the “piece de resistance” gravlax. The distinct texture of this delectably fatty fish, especially fresh from the waters of Alaska, is similar to that of a perfectly cooked piece of foie gras. I don’t know if I’d go as far as my mother in saying it’s “orgasmic,” but when well prepared, this fish is simply divine…

Needless to say, I hope that if my mother doesn’t have the opportunity to return to Alaska for some fishing, they might at least let her try in the fish farms of Chile…