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Tikigaq Cemetery

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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.

Smoked Salmon with Soy Sauce and Brown Sugar Brine

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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:

  1. Arrange salmon fillets in glass baking dishes or similar non-reactive containers.
  2. Mix remaining ingredients in a large bowl.
  3. Pour mixture over fillets, making sure they are covered, or until they float.
  4. Cover containers and marinate for about 8 hours (or overnight) in the refrigerator.
  5. 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)
  6. 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

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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

  1. Place berries and water in a large pot. Cook on medium high heat.
  2. Boil berries for about 15 minutes.
  3. 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.)
  4. Place berries in pot and puree them using an immersion or stick blender.
  5. Pour pureed berries and all liquids from pot into cheesecloth lined strainer.
  6. Let berries sit in strainer for at least two hours to drain off liquid.
  7. Take the liquid that has drained into the large mixing bowl and put it in a pot.
  8. Add sugar to the pot.
  9. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until syrup boils.
  10. Skim off any foam and discard.
  11. Pour juice into canning jars to freeze or into decorative bottles to refrigerate.

Smoky, Fiery Chili con Carne with Beans and Sweet Corn

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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:

  1. Fire up a grill to a fairly hot temperature. Charcoal gives the best flavor, but a gas grill is fine.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. Stir in the sweet corn and the meat.
  8. Serve piping hot with corn bread fresh out of the oven and perhaps some grated cheddar cheese.

Leaving Seward, 2012

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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. 

Halibut with Smoked Chipotle Blue Cheese and Pine Nuts

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Smothered in a mixture of tangy blue cheese, crunchy pine nuts and fiery, smokey peppers, a fillet of halibut, rockfish, snapper or walleye has no chance when placed in front of hungry diners. Here a fillet of black rockfish is served on a bed of black rice.

This year we brought up several wedges of Rogue Caveman Bleu Cheese to Point Hope. This is good stuff, thick and creamy with complex flavors ranging from smoked bacon and butter to sweet fruit. I’ve been eager to use it in cooking, and last night it made its debut on a thick fillet of perfectly flaky black rockfish – one of our favorite fish. Substitute the more traditional halibut for this bleu cheese recipe, or try it with walleye, snapper, porgy or red drum (redfish). Luck into some nice-sized crappie? This twist on the standard bleu cheese topping is just the ticket.

While cayenne pepper powder alone works fine, the wood-smoked chipotles (available from Penzeys Spices) in the following recipe gave this dish a delectable aroma and flavor. Leaving the seeds in the arbol chili kicked up the heat.

Ingredients (Serves 2 to 4):

  • 1 pound halibut fillet, cut into 2 to 4 pieces
  • 1/2 cup bleu cheese, crumbled
  • 1/3 cup chopped pine nuts (or pecans, almonds or walnuts)
  • 1 whole, dried arbol chili pepper, crushed (or 1/2 tsp cayenne powder)
  • 2 smoked, dried chipotle chili peppers, seeds removed, crushed (or use unsmoked chili peppers)
  • 1 tsp dried tarragon, crushed
  • 1 tsp dried marjoram, crushed
  • a few grind of black pepper
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 tbsp lemon juice
  • 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  • additional olive oil for sautéing the mixture

Directions:

  1. Rinse fillets, pat dry with paper towels and set aside.
  2. Set oven on broil and preheat a broiling pan.
  3. In a non-reactive bowl (glass works well) mix together the bleu cheese, pine nuts, spices, herbs and sugar.
  4. Add some olive oil to a small frying pan and heat over medium-low to low heat. Add bleu cheese & pine nut mixture, stirring and turning until cheese is melted.
  5. Add minced garlic and lemon juice to the mixture, cooking for about 1 minute while combining thoroughly. Remove pan from heat and cover with a lid.
  6. Place fillets on broiling pan. Fillets should sizzle when they touch the pan. Broil for about 5 to 7 minutes, depending on thickness of fish. Fish should just be turning opaque when cooked through.
  7. Cover fillets with bleu cheese mixture and continue to broil for 2 to 3 minutes.
  8. Serve piping hot.

We served the fillets on black rice. It was a coin flip between that or saffron rice. This would pair well with a chilled, slightly sweet Gewürztraminer.

Salt Encrusted Whole Fish Stuffed with Shrimp

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Pesce al Sale – Whole fish baked in a salt crust.

I’d read about this simple yet dramatic presentation for many years, but only got around to trying it when a recipe appeared in the June issue of Field & Stream magazine, which I subscribe to. The basic cooking method is a breeze and could easily be prepared onboard a boat or at camp. It is a show stopper when placed on the dining table, both in terms of the beautiful presentation and in terms of the incredibly moist, flavorful fish that results.

Encased in salt and egg white paste, the fish is ready for the oven.

While I had on hand a two pound yelloweye rockfish (Sebastes ruberrimus) which was perfect for this recipe, there are many fish which would work as well. The first that comes to mind are the true porgies – fish in the genus Pagras and Acanthopagrus. In Britain, these fish are commonly known as sea bream. In Japan, they’re are known as tai, and I would love to place a whole salt-crusted madai or kurodai on the table for Japanese guests, who typically revere these fish. Snapper, walleye, striped bass, pompano, black sea bass and even a firm-fleshed Coho salmon would all work well. A halibut just small enough to fit on a large oven tray and served this way would surely draw oohs and aahs.

About a half an hour later, the fish is ready to serve. 

Keep in mind that the best fish dinners start with the freshest fish possible. Good fish should smell as fresh as the sea they came from. Sadly, most American grocers still haven’t figured this one out, so if you’re having trouble finding good fish, try to locate a Japanese grocery store or an Asian market that sells to Japanese customers. Whole Foods and specialty butcher shops also usually carry quality, fresh fish. Costco, too, sometimes carries whole fish and can generally be depended on for a fresh product.

Voila! The dull side of a knife is used to crack and remove the crust, revealing a succulent fish that wants only a drizzle of olive oil and a squirt of lemon.

Figure about one pound of cleaned, gutted whole fish for every two diners. Thus, a two-pound fish will serve four.

Salt-Crusted Whole Fish with Shrimp

Ingredients: Serves 4

All you really need are the first four ingredients. The others are optional and can be omitted entirely or substituted freely.

  • One 2-pound (.9 kilogram) fish, scaled, gilled and gutted but otherwise left whole
  • 4 egg whites
  • 2 cups sea salt
  • a good-tasting extra virgin olive oil
  • parchment paper and baking sheet or baking platter
  • lemon wedges (preferably from Meyer lemons)
  • 1/4 pound shrimp, peeled (optional)
  • tarragon – either 1 or 2 sprigs fresh or 1 tsp dried & crushed (optional)
  • 1 tsp dried marjoram (optional)
  • 1 or 2 bay leaves, crushed (optional)
  • freshly ground pepper (optional)
  • additional sea salt (optional)

Directions:

  1. Line a baking sheet or platter with parchment paper.
  2. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. (232 degrees Celsius)
  3. Use paper towels to pat the fish dry. Use a brush (a clean tooth brush works well) to remove all traces of viscera from the stomach and head cavity. Rub cavity with salt, pepper and crushed tarragon, if desired, or place a sprig or two of fresh tarragon in the cavity. Stuff with the shrimp. Set fish aside.
  4. Whip the egg whites until they from stiff peaks.
  5. Gently fold the salt (and the crushed bay leaves and marjoram, if desired) into the egg whites until a paste is formed.
  6. Spread about 1/3 of the salt paste on the parchment paper in a shape large enough to hold the entire fish.
  7. Place the fish on the salt paste and completely cover with remaining salt paste.
  8. Bake for 25 minutes. Turn oven off and continue baking for five minutes. Remove fish from oven, place on dining table and allow it to rest for another 5 to 10 minutes.
  9. Remove crust by cracking it open with the dull side of a knife. The crust can be lifted off with a spatula, large spoon or wide knife blade. The top layer of the fish will easily lift away from the bones.
  10. Serve with lemon wedges and drizzles of extra virgin olive oil.

We served the fish with oven-roasted potatoes and steamed vegetables. This dish would be fun with Margaritas.

Chocolate Drizzled Orange Marmalade Cookies

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Our trip back to Point Hope, Alaska, went like clockwork – Swiss clockwork at that. The taxi driver arrived at our storage unit (where we’d spent the night in our camper) ten minutes early and was driving a van which easily held our eight coolers loaded with this summer’s catch. Traveling with eight coolers always fills me with a bit of trepidation; you can imagine the “what if” scenarios that run through our heads for this trip. So we plan for the worst and hope for the best.

Up in Point Hope, our big freezer is now stocked for the year while we wait for about a thousand pounds of dry goods we carefully packed and mailed to arrive via the U.S. Postal service.

“Waiting” is not something I enjoy. “Doing” is much more fun. After finding a half of a jar of marmalade in the refrigerator, I decided conducting a cookie experiment would be much more fun than sitting around waiting for groceries to arrive. The results? Orange-flavored cookies. The chocolate added a layer of flavor that complimented the orange tang.

Orange Marmalade Cookies (makes 3 dozen)

Ingredients

  • 2/3 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (can substitute with 2 eggs)
  • 12 tbsp orange marmalade
  • 3 cups all purpose flour
  • 3 tsp baking powder

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
  2. In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar.
  3. Add applesauce and marmalade and mix thoroughly.
  4. In a separate bowl, sift together flour and baking powder.
  5. Mix in flour mixture to butter mixture until just blended.
  6. Drop dough by tablespoons onto parchment-covered cookie sheets. Leave at least one inch between cookies.
  7. Bake until cookies spread slightly and are lightly browned (about 10 minutes).
  8. Cool cookies completely on wire rack.
  9. Drizzle with melted chocolate, if desired. (I used semi-sweet chocolate chips.)

Afternoon Delight – Strawberries and Zabaglione

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Cold, windy, rainy days are perfect days for making something special. This bowl of Strawberries and Zabaglione created with egg yolks, sugar and port wine took only about 15 minutes to prepare – and about two minutes to make disappear.

Some days on Resurrection Bay, glorious sunshine and turquoise waters allow us to imagine we are in the Bahamas rather than Alaska. But this afternoon’s dark skies, white-capped waters and steady drum of cold rain made it a good day to keep the companionway hatch closed and remain cozily tucked into our sailboat with a warm fire in our Dickinson fireplace.

With a few simple ingredients, I whipped up a lovely afternoon snack which had just enough warmth to it to keep the chill outside at bay.

Ingredients

  • 4 egg yolks
  • 4 tsp sugar
  • 4 tbsp port wine

Directions

  1. Whisk all ingredients together over a double boiler until it is not quite as thick as pudding.
  2. Serve immediately over berries. Top with sliced almonds or a spring of fresh mint.

30,000 Seabirds

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At any given moment, there are as many as 30,000 seabirds roosting, nesting, flying and feeding at Cape Resurrection near Seward, Alaska. While kittiwakes and common murres are the two most abundant species, tufted and horned puffins, murrelets, guillemots, auklets, oyster catchers, cormorants, various gulls and other seabirds are also in the mix. Above and below: black-legged kittiwakes in the thousands take advantage of every available ledge.

The noise (and smell) generated by these colonies is as startling as the sheer number of birds. 

The cape also hosts large rafts of common murres containing dozens or even hundreds of birds.  

Horned puffins (above) and tufted puffins are also quite common. They use their thick, uniquely-hinged bills not only to fish, but to dig nesting burrows up to several feet deep. Once the nesting season is over, puffins spend the rest of the year at sea.

In flight, puffins look like large bumblebees, beating the air into submission with their stubby wings. In search of the small fish they feed on, puffins can dive up to 80 or more feet deep and are agile swimmers. 

On land, with their white bellies and dark backs, murres look a lot like penguins, and like penguins, they are very much at home in water. Murres have been recorded diving to depths of  600 feet. Their eggs are various shades of blue with brown speckles and are steeply pointed at one end to prevent them from rolling off the cliffs where they nest.