When we moved to Alaska, I had a goal to learn how to bake. I imagined there would be many dark, cold winter days and baking would be the perfect way to entertain myself while adding new skills. That turned out to be an excellent plan! Way back then, I had a friend who was learning alongside me. We would trudge to each other’s homes through dark, icy blizzards (normal winter weather) and take on a baking challenge almost every weekend. Pretzel dogs were one of our first achievements. Today is not dark, but it is feeling rather wintery outside – a lovely day to connect to a wonderful memory and recreate these tasty treats. Just before these are served, I’ll brush on a little olive oil and sprinkle them with sea salt. Can’t wait to dip one of these into some good mustard!
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Growing up in Clarion, Pennsylvania, there was one, and only one, place I knew of where I could find my favorite pop – birch beer. Lighter, less sweet and crisper than its more popular root beer cousin, birch beer was the lure that made accompanying my mom to the downtown laundromat worthwhile in those days before our household owned a modern washer and dryer. Unfortunately, by the time I was old enough to go into town on my own, the laundromat had been torn down and replaced by a gas station. The birch beer, too, was gone. Thus a handful of decades passed before I’d have another taste of what I always remembered as the perfect pop.
Four years ago while attending a food and writing retreat up here in Alaska, we were introduced to the practice of collecting spruce tips and processing them into syrup. While the uses for this syrup range from topping waffles, glazing grilled salmon fillets, drizzling atop warm brie, to adding a little je ne sais quoi to mixed drinks or a glass of beer, one of our favorite ways to use our syrup is to mix it with ice-cold sparkling water. In the right proportions, the beverage has a crispness reminiscent of birch beer with a subtle hint of lemon shining through where birch beer is a bit more minty.
I don’t know why it took us so long to stumble onto the idea of using the sparkling spruce tip beverage as the base for ice cream floats. But here it is: Spruce Tip Syrup Floats. Barbra added a drizzle of a caramel-fudge-spruce syrup topping she came up with, and on this July morning we served them in modestly-sized four-ounce glasses. Perfect!
We are often fascinated by the way foods run through our lives, linking past memories with present experiences. What is a food experience that brings a piece of your past into the present?
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We relish warming spring days, meals on our deck once again pleasant. Here charcoal-grilled fillets of the year’s very first Copper River Sockeye Salmon served with gemelli pasta tossed in devil’s club bud pesto and topped with a wild spring mix of sautéed twisted stalk, devil’s club buds, fiddle heads and fireweed shoots… an evening ray of sun catching the left side of the plate. * * *
We’ve been waiting for it. And waiting. Day upon day, gray, cold rain. Buckets of the stuff. Birds late. Leaves late. Garden late. Everything late. And then a sudden two days of glorious sunshine and warmth, birds singing, plants waking up, all in agreement spring has officially sprung. Almost overnight lupine, fireweed, chocolate lily, iris and other flowering plants pushed through damp soil. Bursting buds on jostaberry and gooseberry bushes and cherry and apple trees we planted last year provided happy testimony that they had survived an especially cold winter.
Last summer’s berry season was on for the ages – salmonberries, blueberries, wine berries and wild strawberries in astonishing size and abundance. Of course, each summer is different. Here’s to hoping these spring blueberry flowers are a promise of summer fruit. * * *
Late spring, coinciding with the return of salmon to local rivers, marks the beginning of our foraging and gathering season. Thrush song and morning sunshine beckoned us out to a favorite trail that winds through a diversity of biomes from sopping wet muskeg to a dark, moss-covered mixed cedar, hemlock and spruce forest. In boggy areas tiny sun dew plants were beginning new cycles of growth while pinhead-sized magenta bog rosemary blooms called attention to some of the year’s very first flowers, Along the forest edge, we noticed salmonberry plants sprouting new leaves and blueberry bushes covered with a promising profusion of delicate pink blooms. Here and there groggy bumblebees buzzed in and out of foliage.
Still tender and thornless, a devil’s club bud perfect for the kitchen. Note the thorns at the base.
Deeper into the forest the songs and trills of Varied Thrushes, Hermit Thrushes, Ruby-crowned Kinglets and Pacific Wrens filled the air. Suddenly we were happily startled by the eerie but unmistakable too-too-too-too call of a male Saw-whet Owl! A territorial call, we didn’t have to say anything to know that each of us was rooting for a nest of North America’s cutest owl. What a morning!
To celebrate, we collected a few greens to go along with a fillet of the year’s first Copper River Sockeye Salmon. Fireweed shoots (sometimes referred to as Alaska Asparagus), tender young twisted stalk, fiddle heads and delicately flavored devil’s club buds. Some people harvest these items, blanch them, and keep them in their freezer for later. It has been our tradition to harvest enough for the first celebratory meal and serve them sautéed with the first wild-caught salmon of the year. Every bite of this meal is in celebration and gratitude for the season to come.
A toast to the spring view from the deck. Still plenty of snow to on the mountains to ensure our rivers flow cool and full for returning salmon. * * *
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It happens like clockwork every year at this time. I don’t think it’s only me. The gardening commercials are evidence of that. The eager feeling to get planting has begun.
One of my favorite things about hydroponic gardening is that the calendar doesn’t matter. We’ve added another garden to our collection to accommodate larger plants. I created an A-frame trellis at the top of the new garden so sweet peas, dragon tongue beans, and edamame beans have somewhere to climb. The new garden also is growing nasturtium, cucumbers, tomatoes, kale and malabar vining spinach plants.
As the hydroponic experiment continues, I can report that generally lettuces grow really well. They are ready for harvest quickly – sometimes after only a week. Our grocery store sells each clamshell of spring greens for about $9 and by the time those containers get to us, from wherever, they are already starting to wilt. Our fresh greens are tender and crisp, beautiful and delicious. Those aspects of our home grown lettuce make that crop priceless.
How do you calm your itchy, eager fingers until it’s time to plant outside?
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I’ve heard them a few times. In fact, we had one Tu Tu Tuu-ing outside our bedroom window in dark pre-dawn hours last fall. But until yesterday I’d never actually seen a Western Screech Owl before. This one had chosen a perch right outside the entrance to the elementary school here in Cordova, thereby acquiring instant celebrity status. Like most owls in daytime, he mostly slept, now and then barely opening his eyes for a sleepy look at the goings on near his perch.
Do you ever see owls where you live? What kinds?
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Christmas dinner success. This was our first try roasting a duck and root vegetables in a Römertopf – an unglazed terra cotta cooking pot. Quite tasty. The combination of parsnip, rutabaga, carrot and baby potatoes was a perfect base on which to roast the duck, which we first brined and then seasoned with herbs. As the duck released fat, the vegetables marinated and became super tender and flavorful.
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Our long-standing tradition has been to keep a batch of par-baked pizza crusts ready in the freezer for a quick, easy, and delicious meal.
Recently we’ve been watching the Great Courses’ The Everyday Gourmet: The Joy of Mediterranean Cooking. Chef Bill Briwa delivered excellent instruction on how to make Neapolitan Pizza in a home oven. Why were the directions excellent? Just look at the photo. The pizza came as close to a pizza baked in a wood-fired oven as possible in a home kitchen. Nice crispy crust with gorgeous charred bubbles full of flavor. The addition of basil microgreens from our hydroponic garden gave a delicious and lovely finishing touch.
We are definitely converts. More freshly-baked crusts are on the menu!
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Heirloom lettuces and spicy microgreens are happliy growing pest free.
Experiments often includes failures. But failures often bear insights and improvements, right?
Last summer, we experimented with a container garden on our covered deck, an area that seemed to receive abundant summertime sunshine and warmth. We planted cabbages, lettuces, peppers, and tomatoes. I was pretty confident the cabbages would grow, since they are cold-hardy. The peppers never came around, but the tomatoes were interesting.
We started the tomatoes inside from seed, then moved them to the deck in June, but found we had miscalculated the amount of sunshine falling on the deck. As summer progressed and the sun rose higher in the sky, the warmest, brightest sunshine of mid-day was blocked by the roof over the deck. The tomato pants developed v e r y slowly. By September, the plants were a foot tall and were starting to flower. Too late to fruit, I moved the plants to our indoor garden room and hand-pollinated the flowers which then developed into fruit. Hurray!
Disaster followed.
I didn’t realize it, but the tomatoes were infested with aphids – tiny black specks were soon flourishing on all the fresh, tender hydroponic greens. My garden was ruined! I read there are about 1500 recorded species of aphid in North American! I tried a couple of strategies to combat the little beasts, but with no success. My last resort was to kill all the plants, to move any potted plants back outside, to fully sanitize and deep clean the hydroponic garden and to start all over again.
Now, fresh seeds have sprouted and new plants are growing in the hydroponic garden without any signs of pests. No outside plants will mix into the hydroponic room ever again! Lesson learned.
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One of the most delightful things about this savory, silky custard-like soup is the surprise at the bottom. This version of a favorite soup lured you in with toppings of sweet spot shrimp fished from nearby waters and salmon roe ikura. Once you spooned your way through all that deliciousness, you would have been surprised by a nice bite of smoked salmon at the bottom of the bowl. In order to make this first course easy to transport to a Thanksgiving potluck, we made them in four-ounce canning jars. They were cooked bain marie, instead of the traditional steaming, which worked quite well.
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These little custards were baked in two-ounce canning jars and are awaiting the finishing touch of a caramelized top. They are the perfect size for a dessert bite at a potluck.
Tis the season for pumpkin pie. Ten years ago (wow, 10 years!!), we posted a recipe after making a fall pumpkin pie and found ourselves with leftover filling. You know the problem, not enough filling to make a whole second pie, but the idea of tossing the extra unthinkable. We decided to bain-marie the remainder. When the little custards came out of the hot water bath, they seemed to want a bit of crunch. Out came the kitchen torch and a little sugar for a satisfying brûlée finish. And so, a new recipe for our repertoire was born.
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