Saturday, June 16, 2012

Alaska Summer Gourmet....DIY Style

Well the first thing you need to do is catch a king salmon....then reduce it to manageable bits. Starting like this...

The you reduce it into a bit more manageable portions and pack it into cure and let it ride overnight in the ice box. There are a lot of cure recipes out there....I like brown sugar and salt, simple and clean. When you take it out to let the pelicle cure it will look a little like this....

After a few hours to let the pelicle harden, load up the smoker with some soaked wood chips...chip choice is slightly academic but I like hickory.

Load up the cured fish in the smoker and let it go low and slow for several hours...thick slabs of king salmon need about four hours.

During that long interim....go to the Internet and look up Hank Shaw's wonderful morel mushroom risotto recipe. Then get out and hunt some morels at that secret patch you know about...here it is.

After you pick a decent mess of those. Rummage through the herb garden and get some fresh herbs for the preparation. Nothing fancy....but it isn't required.

Fix the rice preparation according to Hank's recipe and it comes out just fabulous...like this!


Serve up the warm fish with the rice prep and the two flavors go incredibly well together....sweet, salty, smoky fish with the subtle flavors of the rice and morels.....



So good I forgot to take a picture of the plate!


1 comment:

Should Fish More said...

I lived in Alaska (Anchorage, actually...)'75-'82 and fished the Kenai area a lot. Your smoked fish post reminded me of when a good friend was working in the bush at some Yukon River village in 80, and got some smoked salmon strips to bring back. He flew into Anchorage, and on his way over stopped at a bar. After a bit the bartender gave him a second drink, motioned to a Native woman sitting by the door, saying she'd bought it for him. On his way out he thanked her; she smiled and told him she'd smelled him when he came in, and that he smelled like home.