We just got home from an amazing week with our cookbook on the road! We left Homer on Wednesday with a truck full of books and stopped in Soldotna for a morning book signing at River City Books. We’re so grateful for every single person who came to see us – from those who brought their own used and pre-ordered copies to those who were already making an impressive move on their holiday gifting! It was so fun to hear about the folks each book was dedicated to, their connection to salmon and Salmon Sisters. With delicious treats from Lucy’s Market, we hit the road for Anchorage to teach an evening cooking class at The Dirty Apron.
This was our first time ever teaching a cooking class, so we were excited and definitely a bit nervous! We explained to our class that we are not trained chefs, just fishermen who love eating good food; they welcomed us regardless. With our 17 new friends we cooked Fish Pie and Orange Rosemary Upside Down Cake, two recipes from The Salmon Sisters: Harvest & Heritage, and enjoyed Rhubarb Apple Cranberry Chutney with smoked salmon and tasty cheeses as we worked.
Fish pie, also known by its Alutiiq name “Perok,” came to Alaska with Russian fur traders across the Bering Strait in the 18th century. As the dried meats the Russians carried with them on their ships ran out, plentiful wild salmon joined their stores of long-lasting ingredients like root vegetables and rice. Long after Russians sold their claim of the territory to the U.S., the dish has remained a staple in Alaskan food culture, for the same reason it endured on the Russian frontier. Many Alaskans have access to wild salmon and the other ingredients (rice, root vegetables, cheese and eggs) store well through winter. It’s a warming comfort food and a great way to use up salmon in your freezer, or leftover salmon and rice. It’s often a celebratory dish, served on special occasions and holidays in many Alaskan communities. Depending on the region it’s prepared in, Perok can feature different main ingredients; In Kodiak, salmon, in the Pribilof Islands, halibut, and on the Kenai Peninsula, moose!
The Orange Rosemary Upside Down Cake is another comforting recipe with great holiday potential. When writing our new cookbook, we were reflecting on a fond food memory of being on a fishing boat in Bristol Bay with a pot of spiced oranges stewing on the diesel Dickinson stovetop. The aroma totally transported us away from the smells of salmon, rain gear and engine oil and to the Italian coast, where we studied abroad during our college years. We wanted to capture this memory in a recipe, and drew inspiration from the Sicilian orange cake, special in Italy. Oranges are one fruit that we regularly have access to in Alaska year-round, and this subtle spiced cake is just so beautiful on the table.
The recipes for Fish Pie and Orange Rosemary Upside Down Cake are posted at the bottom of this story for paying subscribers. You can also find them in your copy of The Salmon Sisters: Harvest & Heritage (pages 183 and 207)!
Our friends at Kaladi Brothers Coffee hosted our book signing the next day, and we were again overcome by all the amazing people who came to have a cookbook signed. We saw old friends from False Pass, the village where we grew up, got to meet the children’s book editor at our publishing house (for a fun someday project), and even a few families from the previous night’s cooking class! The Kaladi Brothers team prepared free samples of our Rise & Grind Coffee Collaboration and we got to catch up after our first season of running a coffee shop in Homer.
The last stop on our tour was The Islander Bookshop in Kodiak. The weather has been beautiful the past two weeks and when the sun shines in Kodiak, the whole island shimmers. We walked through the mossy trees on Near Island, out to the cliffs, and felt the power of the waves washing in. We signed books for the loveliest humans at the coziest bookshop and got to visit with good fishing friends over the weekend. Community is magic, and it felt so good to be in the presence of ours. We’re bottling up all of the warmth shared with us this past week and holding it close as snow creeps down the mountains back in Kachemak Bay. Thanks for joining us this week and enjoy the recipes below!
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