Dining In-A Culinary Tour of America: Alakanuk, Alaska

The City: Alakanuk, Alaska

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

Indoor Smoked Salmon

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

Map

Growing Season

Census Info

Salmon Canning Information-This leads to a pdf you have to download to open and read.

Local Source-This is interesting, it's from the Seattle Times, about a man who lived in Alakanuk for 30 years.

New Year's Pulled Pork

So this year, for New Year's, my sister and I were still turkeyed out after Thanksgiving, so I wanted to do something different. I decided on pulled pork, so we went to Central Market and bought a huge pork roast. I always splurge and get the Niman Ranch, free-range pork. It was about 4.5 lbs in weight, with a good layer of fat on the top, but not so much that I needed to trim it down at all.

Originally I was going to do it in the slow cooker, but when I realized that we had to do it for a lunch earlier in the day I scrapped that idea at the last minute and did it in the oven instead. I had three bbq rub recipes I looked at and based my own recipe off of them. I didn't measure anything, but the base of the rub was smoked paprika. The rest of the rub consisted of: kosher salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, dried oregano, and dried thyme. Rub this into every side of the meat and place it in a large baking dish. Mine was a 9"x13" Pyrex dish. I poured some water into the dish, about a half inch up the side, and then put several shots of Tabasco sauce into the water. Cover with foil and place in a 350 degree oven for three hours.

After three hours, remove the dish from the oven and take off the foil. The water will be infused with the juices from the pork. Carefully drain this into a saucepan and add the pre-made bbq sauce of your choice. I used a combination of two kinds that I had on hand. With the liquid drained from the dish and the foil off, return dish to the pan to allow the meat to cook longer and to crisp up on the outsides for about a half hour more.

When the meat is done, remove from the oven and let sit for at least 15 minutes before touching it. When it's time, take two forks and shred the meat. This will take some time. When it's shredded, pour in some of the sauce and mix to moisten the meat but let other people add the sauce to their liking. Some people don't like sauce at all and some people like to drown it. I served this with rice, cornbread, and salad and it was soooo nummy!

 Pre-shred

Post-shred

No Sugar Apple Pie

In my continuing endeavors to make desserts without added sugar, or fake sugar, I have invented a new delicious version of apple pie. I had one honeycrisp apple that was sitting around getting old, so I peeled and cored it and diced it up into small cubes. Put half the apple in a small frying pan with water and bring it to a boil. Let the apple get really soft and then use a fork to mash it up. Add the rest of the apple, and a dash of cinnamon, ginger, and cloves to taste. Cook this until the whole apple cubes are soft, but don't mash them.

While this is happening, take some of the store-bought frozen puff pastry cups and bake them up according to the package directions. When they're done, cut off the tops, spoon in the filling, mine made three perfectly, and top with the top piece of the cup to serve. This was perfectly sweet and spiced and the pastries are crispy and crunchy. It hits all those flavor and texture elements you want from a baked good. I would imagine you could do this with regular puff pastry and turn it into a turnover. Or you could use phyllo dough or pie dough, I'm sure it's all great. You could probably even attempt this filling for an actual regular-sized pie, but I can't vouch for it. If you do try this for a whole pie, I would recommend skipping the cooking of the whole apple cubes and just let it cook in the oven while the crust bakes.

This was super easy and super delish. I highly recommend it!

Apple Spice Cake

This cake took three attempts to perfect, but I finally got it. I have altered the original recipe enough in the ingredients as well as the method for preparing it that I can safely call it my own creation. I am really excited about this because since I don't really eat sugar anymore, except in the form of fruit, I miss out on a lot of textures. I don't miss sweet because I get plenty of that from fruit, but baked goods and the textures they produce are something I definitely don't get enough of anymore. Well, here is a cake, with a real, true cakey texture, but with only fruit for sweetener. So, without further ado, here is the recipe, along with notes for why I did what I did.

Apple Spice Cake
Wet ingredients:
1/4 cup butter, softened--You want this to be quite soft, because it's the only fat source in the entire batter, besides the egg, you need it to be able to mix easily into all the dry ingredients. I microwave it until it actually starts to melt, that's how soft you want it.
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 large sweet apple, peeled, cored, and grated with the small shred option on a box-grater.--Do this over a bowl to collect any of the juices that will drain out because there will be a lot. I used a large Honeycrisp apple. And by large, I mean one of those "big as your head" apples.

Dry Ingredients:
2 cups flour--I put the first cup of flour into a sifter, then added the spices and baking soda and topped it with the second cup of flour and sifted it all together.
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. ground allspice
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 tsp. ground ginger--This is the key spice. It was my addition and it really adds a warmth that is amazing.
1 tsp. baking soda
1-1 1/2 cups chopped pecans--You could easily use walnuts or omit these altogether if you so desire. Pecans are a naturally sweeter nut, though and that's what I chose to keep them in from the original recipe.
1 cup raisins, chopped--Chopping the raisins is key to the recipe because it allows the sweetness otherwise trapped inside the raisin to permeate the entire batter during the baking process.

1.) Butter a 8"x8" baking dish(I used Pyrex) and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2.) In a small bowl, mix the butter and egg together(because you can't really cream the butter without adding sugar to it, the butter will be oddly chunky-looking, but this is ok), then add the vanilla, the unsweetened applesauce, and mix well.
3.) In a medium bowl, sift the dry ingredients except for the pecans and raisins. Add the applesauce-butter mixture all at once and mix until combined, trying not to overwork the batter. Add the grated apple and any collected juices, the pecans and the raisins and mix again until thoroughly combined.
4.) Pour the batter into the prepared baking dish and bake for about 40 minutes. Use toothpicks to test for doneness. This makes 12 generous servings.

I have not attempted to freeze portions of this but will try with this batch. I don't know why it wouldn't work. I think the next thing I might try, if I wanted to, would be to attempt this recipe with a gluten-free flour mix to see if it will hold up as well. I cannot vouch for that, but if you try it out yourself and it works, please let me know! I am also tempted to try out a version with pear and dried cranberries instead of apples and raisins, but that probably will be for another time...

Change-it-up Breakfasts

So, I have been eating what I thought was a healthy breakfast of shredded wheat cereal and milk during the work week for about a year now, and healthy snacks of AkMak crackers and Trader Joe's brand Triscuits throughout the day. I would eat other stuff with it and for lunch, of course, but I noticed that almost daily I was having problems with feeling bloated and having heartburn. Sorry if that's TMI, but I finally got to the point where I realized I either needed to change my diet or medicate myself to take care of the problem. Heartburn over an extended period of time is not good for the body and can lead to cancer down the road, so I knew I needed to take care of the problem. I am not a fan of medication if I can alter my behavior/diet instead. What I wasn't sure of is the root of the problem, exactly: too much fiber or too much gluten? A little bit of both? I decided to cut all those items out of my diet for a while and replace them with gluten-free items. So, I am eating gluten-free crackers and popcorn/rice cakes with my snacks throughout the day, and finding them quite tasty, actually. My most exciting change, though is breakfast. What to do that isn't milk and shredded wheat, is low in sugar, and can be prepared quickly in the morning? I came up with a few options I thought I'd share here...

First, a bit on the prep: Buy a bag or jar of bacon bits. Not the fake junk, the actual stuff. And get some green onions and tomatoes and chop them up on Sunday, keep them in a leftover container for the week. Take a pound of bulk breakfast sausage, cook it, and divide it up into two ounce portions that you freeze and can take out on Sunday to thaw. Buy a pint size container of egg whites from the store to keep on hand. And shredded cheese, or a block of cheese that you shred yourself, is a must to keep on hand. I have a block of Monterrey Jack cheese that I cut up into 1 oz. cubes. I shred one cube on my grater, using the smaller holes so that it's finer and you get more with the same amount of cheese.

Breakfast tacos: I was quite proud of these. Take one of the 2 oz. containers of sausage and use half of it for this recipe. In a small frying pan, heat the sausage, and add chopped green onions. When this is all heated, add 1/3 cup of the egg whites, which equals 2 eggs, to the pan and scramble them until your preferred doneness. In the meantime, take two corn tortillas and place them on a microwave safe plate. Wet a paper towel and don't wring it out entirely. Set it on top of the tortillas for a minute before microwaving it, with the paper towel still on it, for 30 seconds. This should be enough time to steam them properly. You only need about a half ounce of cheese for these since everything has so much flavor already. Place half of the cheese directly on the tortillas, then top with half of the scrambled egg mixture, then the rest of the cheese. Top with chopped tomatoes and more green onions and salsa, if desired. Or whatever other topping you might want. This is very filling I have found. It can also be done with bacon if you like.

Egg Bowl: This is one of my new favorites. This one requires some prep work the night before you plan on making it. Get a bag of the potatoes O'Brien, the hash browns with onions and bell peppers in it, and take one 3/4 cup portion, which is a single portion, and fry them up in a frying pan with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. When it's done, place it in a microwave-safe bowl and cover it with plastic wrap. Place in the fridge until the next morning. Use 1oz. of sausage and reheat it in the frying pan with more green onions and tomatoes until heated through. Add 1/3 cup of egg whites and scramble until finished. Take the plastic wrap off the bowl of potatoes and reheat for about 45 seconds in the microwave. Again, you only need about a half ounce of cheese for this. Place half the cheese on the potatoes before topping with the scrambled egg mixture. Top that with the rest of the cheese and more tomatoes and green onions if desired. Mix these all together and there you go! Again, this can be done with bacon if you want.

Oatmeal: I had a hard time working this one out. I have a love-hate relationship with oatmeal. It's so good for you but I never find it lasted very long for me before I was starving again, and took so much brown sugar to make it palatable that I didn't want to eat it anymore. I read in a cookbook once about ideas for adding savory toppings to it instead and decided to experiment with that. The one I worked out seems to do very well for me. Take a serving of oatmeal, which is 1/2 cup oats and 1 cup water, and place it in a microwave-safe bowl. Sprinkle it with a little bit of salt and add one tablespoon of the bacon bits to it. One tablespoon equals one strip of bacon, not too horrible, really. Stir this together and microwave for 2.5 minutes or until done. And that's it, it's flavored enough to be palatable, but without the sugar. I might try this out with milk or half milk and half water, just to get a bit more calcium from it.

I have not done this one yet but I want to try out an egg McMuffin with Canadian bacon, the egg whites, and cheese on an English muffin. I might try topping it with sliced tomatoes and green onions too. This of course has gluten, but if done in moderation instead of daily, might not present too many issues. Plus, maybe there is gluten-free English muffins out there if I look for them. I can't vouch for it yet, but that's my game plan.

I have been doing the oatmeal Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the tacos or egg bowl Tuesday and Thursday. This way I don't eat too much eggs and sausage and I don't get sick of oatmeal. It's a good way to divide it up. My heartburn is much less than it was and I feel healthier. I definitely do better with a higher protein diet. I've even, oddly enough, actually lost some weight while eating like this. It takes some coordination and prepping on the weekend or the night before, but it can be done. Each of these takes less than ten minutes in the morning, significantly less time for the oatmeal. I would highly recommend this to anybody looking to change up their breakfast routine, or eat less gluten throughout the day.

Magical Swedish Meatloaf

Last night I was told that the Swedish meatloaf I made for our Friday night family gathering was "magical", and it got enough raves that I thought I'd share the recipe here for anybody who would like the recipe for themselves. It was originally a Swedish meatball recipe, and had different ingredients, but I modified it for my own personal tastes and developed it into a meatloaf recipe in order to cut out a lot of the prep time. If you are not familiar with making meatballs, they are a very labor intensive dish. So, the following was my solution to it.

Swedish Meatloaf:
1/2 onion, peeled and grated
2 Tbsp. butter
2/3 cup milk
5 slices of white bread, crusts removed, diced
2 eggs
1 lb. ground pork
1 1/2 lb. ground chicken
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. ground cardamom
2 tsp. pepper

1.) Saute the onion in the butter over medium-high heat until the onions soften and turn translucent, 3-4 minutes. (You aren't looking to really brown them or caramelize them.) Remove from the heat and cool.
2.) In a large bowl, mix the bread pieces with the milk. Set aside for a few minutes to let the milk absorb into the bread. When it's absorbed, use a fork to mask into a smooth paste, or use your fingers.
3.) Add the cooled onions to the paste and mix very well. Add the eggs and spices and mix very well into the paste. When it's been well-incorporated, add the ground pork and chicken and mix very well. (This will take a few minutes to really make sure the two different meats have blended as well as mixed in with the bread mixture. This takes patience. It will be a very runny mixture when it is complete, don't worry, it'll firm up when it cooks.)
4.) Pour into a standard-sized loaf pan, you don't need to grease it, and bake in a 350 oven for about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes. Halfway through the baking, check to see if there are a lot of juices accumulating and pour them off if you need to. You will need to do this again at the end as well. Ground chicken has a lot more moisture in it than other ground meats and you don't want to steam/boil this.(Do not discard the drippings, save them for the gravy)
5.) When the meatloaf is at least 165 degrees internally, remove it from the oven and allow it to rest for ten minutes or so before cutting into it. I usually serve this with plain noodles and the gravy that I will share the recipe for as well.

Gravy:
6 Tbsp. butter
1/3 cup flour
1qt. chicken stock
1/2-3/4 cup sour cream
salt, to taste

1.) Melt butter in a 2 qt. saucepan. Whisk in flour. Let the mixture cook until it is a rich brown color, stirring constantly.
2.)As the flour mixture(roux) cooks, heat the chicken stock in another pan until it's simmering. Slowly add the chicken stock a little at a time. Stir well until the sauce is smooth and thickened.
3.)Remove the sauce from the heat and add the sour cream and salt to taste. Mix until fully incorporated and serve on the meatloaf and noodles.

Now, if you're like me, you don't always have time to make homemade sauce like this, or you don't always have the chicken stock on hand. I developed an alternative to this that I think works very nicely. Take a packet of chicken gravy mix(foodies might cringe at this, but we all know we use this stuff, don't try and pretend you're too good for it), and prepare it as the instructions call for. When it is made, strain the drippings from the meatloaf into the gravy and return to a boil. Allow it to boil for a few minutes to make sure the drippings come up to the proper temperature. When this is done, remove from the heat and add as much sour cream as you want. And, voila! There you have, easy semi-homemade gravy for the meatloaf that took a lot less time and butter...

This meatloaf makes about 6-8 servings depending on how large a serving you want. I also discovered that it freezes and thaws very well. You can make a whole recipe, eat it for a day or two and then wrap and freeze portions for another time. The gravy, however, you would need to make fresh each subsequent time. So there you have it, my Swedish Meatloaf recipe. Enjoy!

These Treats Don't Suck-A New Baking Series

I got a cookbook for Christmas entitled These Treats Don't Suck, written by Lauren Lopez, one of the members of Starkid, best known for the Harry Potter musicals online. I am a big fan of theirs and therefore I enjoy supporting their projects. This arrived in the mail autographed by her and it was a lot of fun to look through. It's a gluten-free cookbook, and though gluten-free eating is not an issue for me, I've been interested in it just out of curiosity. Everything looked amazing and I decided my sister and I should make all of them, so we bought all the different flours we'd need for them. We started with the very first recipe: Kitchen Sink Cookies, and wow were they delicious. I made one batch with the recommended sea salt on top, and one batch without. I did like the added salt element, so I'd do it that way in the future. These are not nut-free, so if you have a nut allergy these might not be for you. We didn't make them with dairy-free ingredients, but the recipes are actually made for dairy-free ingredients, so I'd hypothesize that with a little further tweaking, they could be made entirely vegan, but I can't vouch for the texture/flavor if you do so. I would highly recommend these cookies. I even broke off my sugar diet for the day just to eat them...They were that good!