stacey . smoore . the staceyfish . 
Life in a Northern Town: the exploits of an ecstatic Alaskan
Lens: the adventures of a girl and her camera
I just so happened to be wandering the aisles of New Sagaya today, lamenting my recent travels and the Martian death flu that resulted in me not cooking in a full two weeks, steadily depleting my frozen stores of homemade soups, breads, and lasagnas, and dreaming of making yet another Margherita pizza, and before I knew it I was in front of the seafood case.
*cue soft-focus light and an angelic choir singing*
It was a beautiful sight that greeted me.
Fresh (fresh!) red salmon! Not frozen, but fresh! And not any red salmon, but Copper River red salmon!
It had been so long since I had seen fresh red salmon, I must have started salivating right there. I quickly ordered a small fillet, kinda glad that someone had neglected to scrawl the price on the glass with a grease pencil.
And let's just say that it's a damn good thing I got paid that economic stimulus free money today. Yessiree, at $25 a pound, I'd better have had some serious cash on hand for that kind of extravagance. But I'm an Alaskan who believes that you've gotta get the seasonal seafood when the getting's good so I was more than happy to shell out.
But here's the real salmon snob coming out in me here: I don't understand the premium placed on Copper River salmon. I know that it's shipped all over the country to be served in fancy-pants restaurants and so the whole law of supply and demand dictates that that particular fish is going to be spendy. Despite that, I honestly think that regular ol' any-river-in-Alaska produces tastier - and more economically priced - sockeyes. But I'm only human and it was the first fresh salmon to be in a seafood case since September and I had a free six hundred bucks in my pocket! Right then, in that moment, I could afford to pay a premium for the first reds of the season.
It was in my oven less than half an hour after being dearly bought and it was in my tummy shortly thereafter. And it was yummy. Salmon season, how I love thee so!
Same recipe as last year, just with a new photo and a good story ยป
There are some days at work that are just way to hectic for me to break away for a bit, drive home, and prepare a delicious meal.
Luckily, I have this recipe, and I can make a delicious, healthy meal at work.
I have a feeling I'm not the only one who's occasionally too busy to get the much needed lunch respite, so in honor of all of us eat-at-our-deskers, I present this, a throughly modern, healthy, and delicious version of the typical American baked potato.
If you're like me, that previously mentioned russet potato (a starchy root whose super-nutritious skins are largely discarded), piled high with butter (artery clogger #1), cheese (A.C. #2), sour cream (A.C. #3), bacon (A.C. #4) and chives (woah, an innocuous one managed to get in there) is pretty unappealing. Try this take instead: a yam (not candied, but left in its pure fiber- and vitamin-rich form), piled with tangy plain yogurt (pretty healthy, especially when compared to sour cream), cumin (a wonderful spice), and rosemary (another fantastic flavor). See, the beauty of this lunch is that not only is it as easy and quick to prepare as the four-fold artery clogger, it's much more flavorful because you use herbs and spices and not lots of animal fat on a root veggie that already has plenty of flavor on its own. (Quick note: yes, that is a jar of ground cumin - I buy most of my spices whole but I go through cumin so fast that I don't take issue with buying it ground. I do keep whole cumin on hand, but for a quick, easy recipe like this it's just easier to take the shortcut.)
And I must admit it: I'm a sucker for the yogurt, cumin, and rosemary blend. I first ran across it in middle eastern lamb spread I make around Easter and for some reason it just works with the yam. And really, with fresh, flavorful ingredients like this, what's not to love? Unless, of course, you count the glares of envy that your Lean Cuisine-reheating officemates will be shooting you when they smell the lunch you're walking around with.
Click here for the recipe for "Baked yam with middle eastern flavors" »
Many years ago I was very, very anti-fish. I eschewed that which went forward on no legs -- just fins -- preferring my critters to cluck or moo.
As I got older I started to get skeptical about my anti-fish rule. There were some species that were tasty, and swordfish is really the first actual fish that was prepared like a fish (i.e. not in stick form) that I would readily ate. A couple of years later we moved to Washington state and my parents fell in love with all the salmon there. I refused to eat the stuff, hating everything about it. At some point when we lived there I started to come around -- really, it's tough to resist fresh wild salmon, especially when it's prepared well like my parents do.
Before too long I was eating the stuff enthusiastically and my salmon-hating days were all but forgotten (in fact, I hadn't remembered that I used to hate salmon for a good eight years or so until I sat down to write this entry). But there was trouble in paradise -- I started going to college in Texas, the land of beef, where if a fish and a cow met they would probably annihilate each other just like matter and antimatter. So for many moons I was salmonless, refusing to eat that Atlantic and farmed pale facsimile of salmon.
After college I moved to Alaska though -- and soon re-discovered my favorite fishy friend. It's so abundant and readily available out here -- even in the winter -- that I soon started to look for different ways to prepare it. Don't get me wrong, sprinkled with rosemary and garlic and grilled is awesome, but there's more than one way to cook a fish. I needed something that would fit into my diet more easily (i.e. not just dinner) because I certainly wasn't eating enough of the stuff.
A couple of weeks ago I ran across an article on NPR's Kitchen Window that featured canned wild Alaska salmon. I was immediately intrigued and mentally filed it away. A couple of days ago I ran across a couple of cans of the stuff in the grocery store and the recipes could sense that their time had come.
So today when I was feeling pretty peckish for lunch, I mixed up the salad, pulled out some greens, and sliced into a fresh loaf of my favorite sandwich bread. First impressions? This salmon salad is superb -- it almost reminds me of a super-gourmet tuna salad, but with much better flavor and no mayo (and hence a heck of a lot less fat). To me, this is the perfect way to re-create a bad recipe: add a couple of very flavorful, very healthy ingredients (dijon mustard, balsamic vinegar, dill, and cranberries) and omit the unhealthy and untasty bad stuff (mayo, yellow mustard, egg yolks, and pickles) and replace one fish (tuna) with another that has less mercury and more omega-3s. You're left with something much better tasting and much better for you. If that's not a winner I don't know what is.
Like so many other things worth eating, once you've had homemade salad dressing you can't go back.
I learned this lesson when I made my first batch of balsamic vinaigarette. When you buy this stuff off the shelf, it's overly sweet, oily, bland, and one-dimensional tasting. But when you make it yourself, it's wonderfully assertive, bold but not overpowering, subtle, and complex.
Plus it's super-easy to make.
Are you sold yet? Seeing the stuff in action ought to do the trick....
