I come from a culinary arts background, but have since left that industry. I am now working on my writing, and enjoying cooking for family and friends.
I have finally finished reading Michael Twitty's book, The Cooking Gene, and in order to try out some of the recipes featured in the book, I had to get my hands on an ingredient that turns out is pretty much impossible to get your hands on in Seattle. I scoured every grocery store in my vicinity, and even made a special trip to Whole Paycheck Foods to look for it there, but with no luck. The only thing that could be done, was to order it online. I finally did, and it arrived last week in a super cute jug. I had no idea what it tasted like or how to use it, but I had a couple recipes to try and also have this handy guide called the internet to refer to for answers.
I had a roasted salmon recipe that calls for sorghum syrup, and decided to try it out last night. The recipe is from Cooking Light, and can be found here. The first thing I noticed when I opened the jug, was how sticky it is. It's super sticky. I'd say it's halfway between molasses and maple syrup in thickness. It got on everything, including things I swear I hadn't even touched. Be prepared to clean extensively when you're finished!
This is the salmon with the sorghum-mustard glaze on it, waiting to go into the oven. After a discussion on twitter last night, I would say that using tofu would be an excellent vegetarian option for this. Please note, that the recipe doesn't call for salt, so you might want to add some anyway, or make sure to season properly before eating. Especially if you end up using tofu. I didn't have lemon zest on-hand, so I just threw in some lemon juice instead. It worked fine.
Here is the post-roasted, post-broiled salmon. I probably could have broiled it longer, but the glaze on the pan was getting really burned and I was afraid of it smoking too much, so I took it out. You can see the edges are nice and browned.
This was really tasty! Sorghum is hard to describe. When you initially taste it, there's an explosion of flavor in your mouth. There's an almost tart/sour flavor up front, but it quickly dissipates into a round, sweetness. It's less harsh than molasses, which I'm not terribly fond of. It's not mapley like maple syrup or like sugar. It really is its own, unique flavor. I was impressed, and ended up keeping the extra glaze to use again on some more salmon.
I found some other recipes to try, a cookie recipe and a cake recipe to try. I am also going to try out some of the recipes from The Cooking Gene, so I'll try to update when I try them out.
If you live in a region where you can easily access sorghum syrup, take a moment to appreciate it! It might not be special to you, but it's not something everybody can easily access. And for those of you wondering about ordering it for yourself, go for it! A little goes a long way, so it will last you a long time and make the cost worthwhile.
Current Head of State: Prime Minister Juha Sipila, President Sauli Niinisto
Form of Government: Unitary Parliamentary Constitutional Republic
Official Language: Finnish, Swedish
Ethnic Groups: Finns, Swedes, Sami, Roma, Russian
Formation Date: 15th century, though first known inhabitants date back to 5200 BCE.
Population: As of March 2016: 5,488,543
Currency: Euro
Independence Date: December 6, 1917-From Russia
Main Religion: Christianity-Luthern, Eastern Orthodox
Famous Finnish Americans: Jean Auel, Pamela Anderson, Matt Damon, George Gaynes, Jessica Lange, Vanessa Williams
National Anthem:
The Food: Lohikeitto and Pannukakku
Translated
into English, this is salmon chowder and a giant oven pancake. The two
items aren't necessarily related, but they were recipes I could make
that didn't require me to special order any ingredients and actually
sounded like things I would eat. It's not easy to get my hands on lingon
berries or reindeer meat in Seattle. Both recipes come from the
internet and I will post the original links in the sources section.
Lohikeitto-Finnish Salmon Chowder
3
Tablespoons olive oil
1 leek, chopped (white and light green part only)
3 cups plus 1 Tbsp. water, divided
1 bay leaf
3/4 lb. potatoes, cubed and peeled
3/4 lb. salmon filet, skinned, boned and cut into small chunks
3/4
cup cream (I used coconut milk since I can’t eat cream of any kind)
1 Tbsp. cornstarch (up to 1 1/2 Tablespoons if you'd like the broth thick)
1 Tbsp.
butter
Salt and pepper
Fresh parsley or dill for topping
Lemon wedge (optional)
Heat the olive in a large
saucepan and saute the leek until softened. Add 3 cups of the water and the bay
leaf and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and carefully add the potatoes. Cover and
simmer until the potatoes are tender.
Add the salmon and simmer for
five minutes. Add the coconut milk and stir to mix. Make a cornstarch slurry
with the cornstarch and 1 Tablespoon of water, stirring to dissolve the
cornstarch. Add to the soup and simmer until the soup has thickened.
Add the butter and remove
from heat. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Top with plenty of fresh
parsley or dill. Serve with a squeeze of lemon, if desired.
This
soup is really light for a chowder. One thing I have noticed with
Scandinavian cooking is a minimalist style. The ingredient list is
usually pretty small and the dish is prepared in such a way that each
ingredient shines for what it is. In this one, the potatoes were very
potatoey and the salmon was very salmony but not fishy. I used dill and
lemon to drizzle over the top and both helped enhance the flavor. I
highly recommend using both.
Even though the soup is
light, it was filling as well. It's a chowder for warm weather. Using
the coconut milk helps it from being too heavy and don't worry, all the
other flavors mask any coconut flavor, so it doesn't taste odd with the
chowder. I recommend using the kind of coconut milk in the cardboard
containers, not the kind in cans. The canned kind is "real" coconut milk
and very strongly flavored. The kind you find in the baking aisle is
not what I consider "true" coconut milk, and works better for things you
don't want to taste like coconut. Also, be careful when you stir this
soup. The salmon and potatoes are both very delicate and you want to
keep them in pieces, not broken up to bits.
Next up
was the Pannukakku, or the oven pancake. This shows up in other
cultures. It's called a Dutch Baby or German Oven Pancake, but this is
the Finnish version. I found this to be a very easy and fun recipe and
it made me want to try other versions.
Pannukakku
6
eggs
1
1/2 cups milk
1/4
cup sugar (optional)(I cut it down to 2 Tbsp. and it was a very light
sweetness. If you like sweeter foods, I would use the full amount.)
1
Tbsp. vanilla sugar
(or 1 tsp. vanilla
extract) (I used the extract)
1/8
tsp. grated lemon zest(I didn’t measure this exactly, but used the zest of one
whole lemon. You could also use orange zest if you want. That would be amazing
too.)
1
1/2 cups flour
1
tsp. salt
1
tsp. baking powder
1/3
cup butter(I found this to be a bit too much. I blotted out some of the butter,
so you might cut out one or two Tablespoons of it.)
1
cup cream, whipped until stiff peaks form(I sprinkled powdered sugar on mine
instead of this)
Fresh
fruit, fruit compote, or sautéed apples(I used fresh blueberries and they were
amazing with this)
Whisk together the eggs,
milk, sugar, and vanilla sugar (or vanilla) until creamy. Stir in grated lemon
zest. Sift together flour, salt, and baking powder and stir into egg mixture.
Allow batter to rest for 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 450º. When
pancake batter has rested, place butter in an oven-proof frying pan. Place pan
in oven and allow butter to melt without browning. Once your butter has melted,
remove pan from oven and use pastry brush to coat surface and side of pan
evenly with the melted butter.
Pour pancake batter into the
hot, buttered pan and return to oven. Bake for 15 minutes, or until puffed and
golden.(Resist the urge to open the door to look at it. Like a soufflé, you don’t
want to let the heat out for this one.)
Serve with whipped cream and
fresh fruit, fruit compote,
or lightly sautéed apples.
Yield: 5-6 servings.
This
pancake was fun! It's all puffy when you take it out of the oven, but
it deflates after a minute. It's really dense and eggy. I'm not sure it
was supposed to be that dense, but it was still delicious. I really
liked it with the powdered sugar and blueberries. Raspberries and
blackberries would be great too. Strawberries too, obviously!
I
really enjoyed making and eating both of these recipes. Neither of them
takes too much time to make and were not difficult at all. I highly
recommend both of them! Finland always seems to be forgotten, but their
food is really tasty. Give it a try!
Alakanuk, pronounced "Ah-luck-ah-nuck", is a Yup'ik word that means "wrong way"/"mistake village". It is located on the far western tip of the Alaskan coast, at the mouth of the Yukon River. As of the 2012 census, there were approximately 709 people living in this city. The population is about 95% Native American, and 2.1% Anglo American. Alakanuk averages 60 inches of snow each year. The average income is $11,632 and according to the 2010 census, 33.8% of the population lives below the poverty line.
The majority of the Native Americans living in Alakanuk belong to the Yup'ik tribe. Yup'ik translates to "real people". They originally hail from eastern Russia, and there is still a tribe living in Siberia who are related to these people. They are also related to the Eskimo and Inuit peoples. The placement of the city was such that they were largely untouched by the influx of white settlers and explorers in the 1800's, but eventually there was a salmon cannery that opened in the mid 1940's and the city grew in population and amenities, though one might wonder if the cost was worth it. As with many other places in the United States, Native children were sent to boarding schools and forbidden to speak their language. It went a long way towards assimilating the children into the greater Anglo-majority.
Alakanuk is located in the subarctic zone, and the diet of the people who live there consists largely of seafood and wild game. Alaska has a short growing season and depending on where you are, poor soil quality, which makes growing vegetables difficult. Because of this, the people who lived there would have developed a diet consisting mostly of animal-based products.
The Meal:
Since salmon is so big in Alaska, I wanted to focus on that. Most of the pictures I looked at and the research I did showed that plain fire-smoked salmon was the most common preparation. I also noticed that most of the fillets had checkered cuts in them, probably to help cook it faster. They use large knives that are rounded on both ends, and I don't have one of those, so I just used a boning knife and cut down to the skin, but not through. I do think this helped get the seasoning into every bite. The rub I used was one tablespoon(packed) of light brown sugar, half a tablespoon of kosher salt, and about 1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper. I rubbed this into the salmon after making the cuts, and made sure I got it into the cuts as well. When this was done I put it in a plastic bag and refrigerated it all day. A lot of moisture was drawn out during the course of the day, but it also was infused with the seasoning.
I have never made smoked salmon before, but I love to eat it. In Seattle, we usually prepare it using hot smoke methods, which creates a unique texture. If you've ever seen lox before, popular on the East Coast, then you know what cold smoked salmon looks like. The texture is vastly different; it almost looks raw to me, compared to hot smoked salmon.
I was excited to try making my own smoked salmon, especially with the added challenge of not owning a smoker. Fortunately, I had access to wood chips(alder), so I borrowed some of those and rigged up my own homemade "smoker". Usually you soak the wood chips so they will smoulder and smoke, and not really flame up, but do you know how difficult it is to light wet wood chips? It's pretty much impossible, as I learned tonight. I added fresh chips to light those in the hopes of covering them with the soaked chips, but I could not get those to light either. My sister and I went through about a whole book of matches trying it, and had no luck. I had to come up with plan B if I wanted to do this right. As Tim Gunn from Project Runway always says, "Make it work," and so I did. I turned on the broiler and put the pan of chips under it, but ultimately I placed it further down on the rack and closed the oven door for a couple minutes(with the broiler still on). They were smoking by that time so I hurriedly placed the small rack and the salmon on top of it and covered the whole contraption in foil and placed it back in the oven, which I turned down to 400 degrees. I left it covered the entire time which was about a half hour for the .6 pound fillet I had.
During this time I made the fry bread to accompany the salmon. Fry bread is a well known Native American dish in the Southwestern United States and I was surprised to hear that it was a dish served in Alaska as well. The recipe I used was a bit different from the other fry bread, which tends to look like a large, puffy tortilla. The ingredients were super simple, just flour, baking powder, salt, and water. It was thicker than a pancake batter, but still gloppy enough to generally hold its shape. They had the consistency of a pancake mixed with a biscuit that has been fried. The recipe called for frying it in shortening but I used canola oil instead because I don't cook with shortening whenever I can avoid it. The flavor was a little bland, it could have used more salt, but the texture was oddly addictive and I found myself eating more of it than I had intended.
When the half hour was up, I took the pan out of the oven and opened it out on my porch since I was not sure how much smoke would have built up in there. I didn't want to flood my apartment with it or risk setting off any fire alarms. There was a fair amount and I would recommend opening it outside if the option is available to you if you ever try this. I also cannot recommend enough the use of a disposable aluminum pan for this, it makes the clean up so much easier. You can see the small rack I used to place the salmon directly over the chips, but not touching them. The foil kept the smoke trapped inside so it had no choice but to infuse into the salmon. The salmon had the texture I was used to in a smoked salmon, the sort of hard outside but the soft inside. I read in one of the recipes that to achieve this effect, you leave the salmon sitting out at room temperature for a while before smoking it to let the surface dry off a little. I did this and I think it definitely helped.
I did have one mishap tonight, besides the near smoke fail, and that was my potatoes. I bought some lovely new potatoes and cut them up and put them in the steamer basket in my pan and started to steam them...and it was about half way into this process that I realized I had forgotten to add water to the bottom of the pan and the potatoes and the pan had scorched. Fun! Fortunately my sister had a microwave baked potato she wasn't going to use and let me have it instead. Green beans, though probably not strictly authentic to true Alakanuk experience, rounded out the meal.
I only ate half of the salmon tonight and am very curious what the other half will taste like cold tomorrow. I think smoked salmon is truly at its finest when it is eaten cold. The flavor was really good, slightly sweet but not too sweet. Not salty, but not bland either. The pepper just kicked it up a bit too. It really did not need anything else for flavoring. The smoke flavor was light, but I do think it was there and not just my imagination. Again, when it's cold, the flavors may meld together even more and the flavor might be even better.
I am not sure that I would prepare salmon like this very often, since smoked salmon is so readily available, but I am really glad I tried it out. It was fun, it was an adventure and it wasn't as hard as it could have been. This was a great way to kick off this project. I had fun and I hope you enjoyed reading about it!
Recipe links: Because these were not my original recipes, I will share the links so that the people who created them get the credit they deserve. Fry-bread
Alakanuk/Yup'ik links: Because proper historians cite their sources, I will share the links to my research, outside of Wikipedia links, which are considered general and easy to look up on your own if you so desire. City picture
