Bagels 3 Ways: Blue Poppy Seed, Roasted Sesame Seed and Onion

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

Just the way we like them – chewy on the outside and soft on the inside, these bagels are topped with Penzey’s minced onion, blue poppy seeds, and roasted sesame seeds.

I let the Zojirushi bread machine do the first steps of mixing, rising, and kneading the bagel dough while I tended to other things today. After about one and a half hours, it was my turn to finish the bagels by shaping them, boiling them and baking them. When the finished bagels came out of the oven, we knew the dinner menu would feature these beauties smeared with cream cheese and topped with Jack’s smoked salmon.

Bread Machine Bagels

Ingredients

1 1/4 cup water
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp granulated sugar
2 cups all purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
3 quarts boiling water
3 tbsp sugar
1 egg, beaten
toppings of your choice

Directions

Place first 5 ingredients in the bread machine pan in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select dough setting.
When cycle is complete, turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and let rest.
Bring 3 quarts of water to a boil. Add 3 tbsp of white sugar.
While water is coming to a boil, cut dough into 8 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball. Flatten balls into discs about 1/2 inch thick. Poke a hole in each disc and twirl the disk around your finger to enlarge the hole. Place bagels back on the lightly floured surface to rest until the water boils.
Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
When water is boiling, place bagels in water. Boil for 1 minute, then flip to boil for an additional minute. (I fit 4 bagels at a time in my pot.)
After bagels have boiled, remove them from the water with a slotted spoon or strainer spoon made for frying. Place bagels on a clean, dry towel.
Arrange bagels on baking sheet. Brush tops of bagels with beaten egg. Sprinkle with topping of your choice, or leave plain.
Bake for 20 – 25 minutes, until well browned.

Smokey, Spicy Butternut Squash Soup with Almonds

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

This hearty, flavorful butternut squash soup will take the chill off of crisp autumn evenings.

Recipes go through iterations until, it is hoped, something approaching perfection is obtained. Of the many squash and pumpkin soups I’ve made over the years, this, so far, has been our favorite. The secret? Smoked chipotle peppers. These robust, pleasantly fiery chili peppers have been this fall’s find in our kitchen. Combined with even hotter arbol chili peppers, the combination has been adding extra zip and depth to our chilies and soups. (Barbra’s worried I’m going to start putting these chilies into our morning oatmeal and waffles.)

The other twist to this particular squash soup was the addition of toasted almonds. As with many recipes, this one invites experimentation. Roasting or grilling the tomatoes and squash adds a dimension of flavor, as does toasting the chopped almonds. And don’t overlook the small pumpkins that are available this time of year as a possible main ingredient. A mug or bowl of this soup served with a hunk of crusty French bread is just the thing as fall days turn wintery.

Ingredients:

3 cups butternut squash purée (made from steamed, roasted or grilled squash, or from canned pumpkin or squash)
1 large sweet onion, chopped (about 2 cups)
1 pound diced tomatoes, seeds removed
1/2 cup chopped almonds (preferably toasted)
2 cups chicken broth (I used Better than Bouillon)
3 dried smoked chipotle chili peppers, chopped fine
2 dried arbol chili peppers, chopped fine
1 tsp powdered coriander
3 cloves garlic
1 tsp powdered ginger
1 tsp powdered cinnamon
1 tsp grated nutmeg
freshly ground black pepper to taste
sea salt to taste
1 cup heavy cream
olive oil

Directions:

Cut up a butternut squash into discs roughly 1 inch thick, and then cut the discs into halves or quarters. Scoop away the seeds and fibrous matter. Roast, grill or steam the squash and peel away and discard the skins. To oven-roast, heat oven to 400 degrees F., place a baking sheet covered in olive oil in the oven, and when it’s hot, add the squash. Roast for 30 to 40 minutes, or until some of the squash starts to brown.
Combine the chopped onions, tomatoes and garlic and grill, roast or sauté until onions are translucent. This can be done by placing some olive oil in a large skillet, heating over medium heat, and adding the tomatoes, onions and garlic, stirring occasionally.
Combine all of the ingredients except the cream in a large mixing bowl. Purée with a stick blender (or in a food processor or with a conventional blender).
Scrape and pour ingredients into a large pot. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until soup begins to simmer. Continue simmering on low heat for 20 minutes. A flame tamer may be necessary to prevent soup from boiling. Continue to stir occasionally.
Stir in cream and return soup to a simmer.
Serve piping hot.

Garnish individual bowls of soup with sun-dried tomatoes cut into thin strips, a spoonful of toasted garlic and almonds, or both.

Alaska’s Permanent Fund and Trout Unlimited

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

Daughter Maia works a pool in the canyon country of Oregon’s Deschutes River.

This past summer, we fell in love with the film Away We Go in which Verona De Tessant (Maya Rudolph) and Burt Farlander (John Krasinski) find themselves in the enviable, daunting and sometimes scary position of realizing that, although they are not wealthy, they can live virtually anywhere they choose to. Their story unfolds as a touching, insightful comedy as they criss-cross North America searching for just the right place.

Verona: I can do my job from anywhere. And all you need’s a phone, right?

Burt: Well, we don’t want to go back to Chicago, do we?

Verona: No, we did Chicago.

Burt: I used to picture myself in Alaska. God, I love that landscape.

Verona: Alaska?

Burt: Yeah.

Verona: You’ve never mentioned Alaska.

Burt: Wow, they pay people to live in Alaska.

Burt’s line about people being paid to live in this great state gets laughs from audiences, although for different reasons depending on who the audience is. While it’s not true that people are paid to live here, there is something called the Permanent Fund. Without getting into the complexities, Alaska’s Permanent Fund is a constitutional provision established in 1976 that, essentially, taps oil revenues allowing the state government to pay an annual check to every Alaskan resident once they’ve lived here one fiscal year. The amount of the check varies from year to year. The current five-year average is $1,341. This year’s payout was lower, but still appreciable at $878.

That’s where Trout Unlimited comes in.

Barbra and I feel a deep commitment to helping to conserve, protect and restore America’s cold water resources. This commitment flows naturally from our love of salmon and trout and the beautiful and often pristine environs they inhabit and depend upon. Protecting our cold water resources, though, is about more than protecting fish. Trout Unlimited has worked in concert with others to bring down dams that are no longer useful – thus restoring countless miles of free flowing rivers and streams. They work with vineyard owners and other farmers to help ensure water-wise land use. And all across the landscape, TU has, for decades, been instrumental in ensuring that mining, timbering and other resource extraction be carried out with sensible respect for its impact on rivers, streams and estuaries when sensible respect is possible, and that extractive industries be turned away when they can’t conduct their business without destroying watersheds.

At present, TU is in the midst of several critical battles. One of them involves a multi-national mining proposal that threatens the world’s greatest salmon estuary, Bristol Bay. The proposed Pebble Mine could wipe out runs that number into the millions of salmon, as well as fishing jobs and subsistence fishing that generations upon generations of Alaskans (and salmon consumers throughout the world) have depended on. TU is also on the vanguard in fighting against irresponsible extraction of natural gas locked underground in Marcellus Shale. The extraction requires fracking, and it is posing a major risk to the streams and rivers I cut my teeth on as a young angler in Western Pennsylvania.

Again, this isn’t just about trout and salmon. We humans, too, drink the water, grow our farms and forests with it, admire its beauty, and are responsible for passing down a legacy of clean water to future generations.

And so, presented with money that is essentially a gift from our adopted state, the choice on how to spend it was easy. This year, Barbra and I will become lifetime members of Trout Unlimited.

After vetting dozens of organizations, we came to feel that in TU, our contributions will support the causes closest to our hearts. Not just for us, but for generations to come.

To read more about TU’s efforts, click on the following links:

Trout Unlimited’s Home Page

Marcellus Shale Project

Bristol Bay

Maia on a seldom-fished hike-in lake raptly watching her fly line for a twitch.

Smoked Salmon Quiche and Butternut Squash Pie: Savory and Sweet Breakfast (or Dinner)

Posted on September 15, 2012 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

Savory smoked salmon quiche, sweet butternut squash tarts, a strip of smoked salmon and a mug of black French roast coffee make for a hearty Fisherman’s Breakfast.

Whether served as breakfast, lunch or dinner, we’re big fans of quiche. It’s easy to make, and since it’s delicious either hot or cold, there are no complaints about leftovers. In making this particular quiche, I set out to resolve two questions. First, would smoked salmon that has been frozen and then thawed work well, and second would the Penzeys dried shallots I’d recently gotten live up to their billing. I’m happy to report that the smoked salmon seemed to suffer not at all from freezing, and the dried shallots were flavorful enough to merit making them a standard part of our kitchen here in the Alaskan bush.

For the squash pie, I used a modification of Craig Claiborne’s pumpkin pie recipe that has long served well. Since the baking times and temperatures for these two pies was similar, I baked them together. We had a bit of squash purée and pie crust dough left over, so Barbra used a muffin pan to make a few squash tarts.

Smoked Salmon Quiche

Ingredients:

1 pie crust
4 large eggs
3/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup milk
1 cup shredded Swiss or Gruyère cheese
1/4 cup shallots chopped fine (I used Penzeys dried shallots,which were excellent)
1/2 cup mushrooms, cut into less-than-bite-sized pieces
1/3 to 1/2 pound smoked salmon, cut into less-than-bite-sized pieces
1/3 cup sun dried tomatoes, cut into small pieces
1 tsp dried majoram
sea salt to taste
freshly ground pepper to taste

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Bake pie crust for 20 minutes. Halfway through baking, cover edges with aluminum foil or a pie ring to prevent edge of crust from burning.
Remove the pie crust from the oven and set aside.
Turn oven up to 400 degrees F.
Whisk eggs until blended. Add cream, milk, shallots, marjoram, salt and pepper and mix together.
Add mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes and smoked salmon, mixing together gently so as not to break up the salmon.
Pour and scrape ingredients into the baked pie crust and place on oven’s center rack. You do not need to place on a baking sheet.
Bake quiche at 400 degrees F. for 15 minutes. Turn down oven to 350 degrees F. and continue baking for 25 – 35 minutes – until a wooden toothpick poked into the center comes out clean.
Serve hot or cold.

Butternut Squash Pie

Ingredients:

1 pie crust
3 cups butternut squash (or pumpkin) purée
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp powdered ginger
3 large eggs, lightly whisked
2 tablespoons Bourbon (optional, but very tasty)
1 cup heavy cream

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
Have a chilled, unbaked pie crust ready.
Squash purée: Cut away the stem of the squash and discard. Then slice squash into into round discs approximately 1 inch thick. Cut the disks into 4 to 6 parts. When you get to the bulb, remove the seeds and fibrous part and slice into 6 strips as you would a pumpkin or melon. Steam, oven roast or grill the squash until a fork passes easily through the flesh. Let cool and cut off the skin. Use a stick blender, regular blender or food processor to purée the squash.
Combine the purée with all the other ingredients in a large mixing bowl, blend together, and pour into the chilled pie crust.
Place on oven’s center rack. Bake for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 degrees F. and continue baking for 30 or 40 minutes, until the filling is set. Cracks will begin to appear on the surface of the pie when the filling is set.
Serve warm or chilled, with or without whipped cream.

For a great recipe for making smoked salmon, see Smoked Salmon with Soy Sauce and Brown Sugar Brine.

Tikigaq Cemetery

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

Weathered jawbones of bowhead whales form a fence around the cemetery in Tikigaq, (Point Hope) Alaska).

After four consecutive weeks of daily rain – a precipitation rate almost unheard of in this semi-arid region of the Arctic – we’ve had several days of brilliant sunshine. The past three mornings, the gravel that makes up the ground here in Point Hope has been hard underfoot. Frost. The cloudberries are over, and the frost means it’s time to go pick cranberries. In the old days, the dead were not buried. “The land all around was our graveyard,” I was told by one of the people of the village. But when the missionaries came, they told the people of the village that the dead must be buried. And so this cemetery was created.

Today while Barbra and I were eating lunch, we saw a snowy owl outside my classroom window. Last week a brown bear – a grizzly – passed by the edge of town. This might be a good weekend to get up early and walk up the beach in hopes of seeing a walrus.

La Boulangerie Arctic

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

Soft, bakery-style French bread, the chewy crust sprinkled with an especially tasty grey sea salt.

After tinkering with a few recipes, I now have my go-to recipe for French bread. The recipe produces two lovely baguettes or one larger loaf. Either way, it’s hard to stop with just one slice of this bread, and it looks as appetizing as it tastes. After having difficulty getting bread to rise in our Arctic home, I now rely on my Zojirushi bread machine to prepare the dough for this recipe. The loaves are then finished off in the oven. From start to finished bread, it takes about two and a half hours. A warm slice slathered with butter is the perfect accompaniment for Jack’s delicious clam chowder.

Homemade French Bread

Ingredients

1 1/4 cup water
2 tsp granulated sugar
1 tsp salt
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp active dry yeast
2 tbsp olive oil

Glaze with

1 egg
1 tbsp water
2 tsp grey sea salt (or other artisan rock salt)

Directions

Place first six ingredients in the bread machine pan in the order recommended by the manufacturer and select dough setting. Add 1 – 2 tsp of water during cycle if dough does not form into a ball.
After dough cycle completes, turn dough onto a lightly floured surface.
Divide in half.
Roll each half into a rectangle, approximately 10 inches by 8 inches.
Roll up each rectangle, jelly-roll style, along the long side to produce long loaves.
Pinch seams to seal.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Place loaves, seam side down, on pan.
Cover and let loaves rise in a warm place until doubled, about 20 minutes.
Whisk egg and water. Brush loaves with egg mixture. Make 4 shallow slashes across loaves. Sprinkle loaves with sea salt.
Bake at 375 degrees F for 20 – 25 minutes, or until golden brown.
Cool on wire rack.

Smoked Salmon with Soy Sauce and Brown Sugar Brine

Posted on September 9, 2012 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

Smoked salmon is a highly anticipated delicacy. With another successful fishing season behind us, I used a tried and true recipe to turn out several pounds worth.

Smoked salmon mousse, smoked salmon omeletes, smoked salmon on pasta, and smoked salmon on crackers are among the many great reasons to set aside a couple of days and smoke part of your catch. Once you’ve done a batch of smoked fish, it’s easy to appreciate why it’s expensive. Smoking takes time. But the results are very much worth it. There’s really not much to our favorite recipe. From year to year and batch to batch, I might vary the amount of garlic or ginger or try a new spice or seasoning. But other than that… well, here it is.

Smoked salmon pizza always draws rave reviews.

Smoked Salmon with Soy Sauce and Brown Sugar Brine

The basic recipe is 4 parts water to 1 part soy sauce with 1/4 cup sea salt for every cup of soy sauce. Figure about 1 cup brine per pound of fish. Add brown sugar, garlic and ginger to taste. White pepper, cayenne pepper, and other seasonings and spices can be added to create unique brines.

Pyrex clear glass bakeware with their plastic lids is perfect for marinating the fillets. If you’re using a Big Chief or Little Chief smoker, the metal racks fit atop the empty Pyrex containers – and with the fillets atop the racks this setup works well for drying the fillets in the refrigerator prior to smoking.

Ingredients: For eight pounds of salmon, trout, sturgeon or other fish

8 pounds fillets, skin on, rinsed, patted dry, cut into small pieces (a good size is about 3″ x 6″, but smaller or slightly larger is fine)
8 cups water
2 cups soy sauce (Kikkoman is our favorite)
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup sea salt or kosher salt
1 1/2 tbsp granulated garlic
1 tbsp ginger

Directions:

Arrange salmon fillets in glass baking dishes or similar non-reactive containers.
Mix remaining ingredients in a large bowl.
Pour mixture over fillets, making sure they are covered, or until they float.
Cover containers and marinate for about 8 hours (or overnight) in the refrigerator.
Remove fillets from brine, pat dry with paper towels, and arrange on racks to dry in the refrigerator for 6 to 8 hours (or overnight)
Smoke fish according to your smoker’s directions with alder wood, mesquite, fruit tree or hickory chips. Check frequently, keeping in mind that air temperature will influence smoking time. Typical smoking times range from 6 to 8 hours. A slightly wet product is best suited for many of the recipes we enjoy. For straight snacking, a drier product may be preferred.

Don’t have a smoker? Excellent smoked fish can be made on a charcoal grill. I’ve done small batches on my little Weber Smokey Joe and larger batches on Weber’s larger models.

Looking for a recipe to use your smoked salmon in? Type “smoked salmon” into the search tool on this page for some great ideas.

Homemade Cloudberry Syrup – For Belgian Waffles and Italian Sodas

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

Although ripe cloudberries are golden amber in color, the syrup they produce is a luminescent dark pink. Thick and flavorful, mixed with carbonated water, the syrup makes refreshing Italian sodas. This morning, it topped our Belgian waffles.

We’ve already turned about 20 pounds of freshly picked cloudberries (click here to see cloudberry photos) into two kinds of jam as well as sorbet. Our most recent venture out on the tundra yielded another eight pounds that I hadn’t counted on. When I asked a berry-picking friend what she thought I should make, she enthusiastically replied, “Syrup!”

The syrup, which is easy to make, turned out a beautiful dark pink color. I hadn’t expected this because the fruit I started with was a lovely salmon color. The seeds seemed to color the juice. I made freezer jam with the remaining pulp in order to save every luscious part of the berries. I thought if the “pulp jam” didn’t look good, it could still be used as a key ingredient in fruit breads. Any kind of berries could be used to make this syrup with an adjustment to the amount of sugar used.

Aqpik (Cloudberry) Syrup

Ingredients: (Yields 4 cups syrup)

10 cups of berries
4 cups of water
3 cups granulated sugar

Directions

Place berries and water in a large pot. Cook on medium high heat.
Boil berries for about 15 minutes.
Line a strainer with cheesecloth. Elevate strainer over a bowl so that syrup can drain through cheesecloth and into the bowl. (I used a strainer that stands by itself set on a wire cooling rack set on a large mixing bowl.)
Place berries in pot and puree them using an immersion or stick blender.
Pour pureed berries and all liquids from pot into cheesecloth lined strainer.
Let berries sit in strainer for at least two hours to drain off liquid.
Take the liquid that has drained into the large mixing bowl and put it in a pot.
Add sugar to the pot.
Cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until syrup boils.
Skim off any foam and discard.
Pour juice into canning jars to freeze or into decorative bottles to refrigerate.

Smoky, Fiery Chili con Carne with Beans and Sweet Corn

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

Berry leaves are turning red and the grass is going to autumn gold. Nightly temperatures are dipping into the thirties. We’re losing about seven minutes of daylight each day. Winter’s coming, and so today I made the season’s first Big Pot of chili.

I’ve been doing this for years now – one or two pots of chili con carne every fall and winter. No two pots are the same. Here’s this year’s first four-gallon batch. The smoked chipotle’s, smoked sea salt and charcoal grilled meat made this batch the best chili to date!

Ingredients:

2 3/4 lbs tri-tip steak
1 tbsp cumin – divided into two equal portions of 1/2 tbsp each
olive oil
1 tbsp sweet mesquite seasoning
13 lbs, 10 oz diced tomatoes, seeds removed
1 1/2 pounds (24 oz) tomato paste
3 3/4 pounds sweet onions, chopped coarse
2 1/2 lbs sweet corn
9 pounds beans, soaked, tender, and ready to go. Pinto and black beans in equal portions work well. Alternatively, all black beans are fine.
water, as needed (about 1 to 2 cups)
2 bay leaves
1 1/2 tbsp dry oregano, crushed
1 tbsp dry sage
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp white pepper
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp smoked sea salt (to taste)
2 arbol chilis, with seeds, chopped fine
4 smoked chipotle chilis, with seeds, chopped fine
2 tbsp chili garlic sauce
2 tbsp mince garlic

Directions:

Fire up a grill to a fairly hot temperature. Charcoal gives the best flavor, but a gas grill is fine.
Cut the tri-tip into small cubes. And place into a mixing bowl. Add 1/2 tbsp cumin, 1 tbsp mesquite seasoning, and 1 tbsp olive oil. Mix together and place on a sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil that has been coated with olive oil.
Place the aluminum foil with the meat on it on the grill and cover. Use a spatula to occasionally turn and stir the meat till it’s cooked through. Remove meat from grill, place in a bowl and set aside.
Meanwhile, place tomato paste in a bowl and stir in just enough water to make a thick liquid. If you’re using canned diced tomatoes, the liquid from those will be plenty. Set aside.
Add olive oil to a large pot, heat over medium heat, and add onions. Stir to ensure even cooking. When onions just begin to turn translucent, add the tomatoes, the tomato paste (from step 4), and all the remaining spices and seasonings. Heat over medium heat and stir till well mixed. Add the beans. The spices will become more pronounced with cooking, so wait at least an hour before adding additional spices.
Bring pot to just barely boiling, then reduce heat to a low simmer. Use a flame tamer if necessary. Cook for one hour, or more.
Stir in the sweet corn and the meat.
Serve piping hot with corn bread fresh out of the oven and perhaps some grated cheddar cheese.

Leaving Seward, 2012

Posted on September 2, 2012 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

Rainbow over Cook Inlet – this photo was taken the second week of August, our last week in Seward.

For us, our summer in Seward came to an end in early August. Our sailboat, Bandon, is sitting on the hard with a fresh coat of bottom paint. We are already counting the days till next May when we’ll move back aboard.

Below: There are days on the Kenai Peninsula when it looks and even feels like we could be in Hawaii or some South Pacific paradise. As it is, we are in a paradise – Alaska. We can’t imagine a better place to cut our teeth as sailors than in Seward.