Wild Salmon Season is Open!

It’s just another day in the office. Justin is busy cooking, amazing smells are wafting out of the kitchen, Ryan is shooting away and the rest of us are trying to stay focused on our work… knowing that the minute they’re done shooting, we’ll be able to dig in.

In anticipation of wild salmon season opening, Justin picked up a new cookbook (it’s even signed!) a few months ago: Northwest Homegrown Cookbook Series Salmon by Cynthia Nims. It has heaps of information in the beginning about salmon in general which has been very helpful to both Katy and me since we’re becoming salmon experts (so we can educate the world about fishing practices, river origin, species, etc.).

And as any good cookbook is, it’s chock full of delicious sounding recipes. In my mind, the only thing it’s missing are photographs to accompany each recipe… the kind that make me obsess with delight over cookbooks. It’s a good thing we have Ryan!

On the menu for today:
Grilled Salmon Salad Nicoise
Salmon Burgers with Basil Mayonnaise
Salmon Pot au Feu

Since we had a nice stash of fresh wild salmon on hand, Justin made a little appetizer of fennel and sea salt crusted salmon (a technique he picked up from Matt Janke of Matt’s in the Market) and I managed to sneak a few bites. It was so good I could have devoured the entire thing, but I politely sat back down at my desk and went back to work studying the difference between wild and farmed salmon (FYI, farmed salmon sucks).

After Katy made two trips to the market for just the perfect olives, this salad turned out picture perfect. Being the first course, we wolfed it down.

Grilled Salmon Salad Nicoise: Sockeye Salmon with fingerling potatoes, green beans, vine-ripe tomatoes, hard boiled eggs and Nicoise olives dressed in a subtle anchovy dressing.

Next came the Copper River Salmon burger. It almost hurt to see Justin chop up the beautiful piece of fish to make it into a “burger,” but let me tell you, it far surpassed any salmon burger I’ve ever tasted. This was the epitome of all fish burgers.

Copper River Salmon Burger: Salmon burger and roasted asparagus plated on a hexagon palm leaf dinner plate.

The final course? The soup. This was kind of fun (in a heckling sort of way) to watch Ryan photograph because I knew he’d never taken soup pictures before (who has, really?).

Salmon Pot au Feu: A soup of wild Alaskan King and Sockeye salmon, fingerling potatoes, small onions, baby artichokes and tarragon.

Obviously Ryan did a good job. Since a picture speaks a 1000 words, I’ll let you decide for yourself how this turned out.

We wrote to Cynthia asking for permission to reprint her recipes. She was extremely helpful and is just waiting to get the okay from her publisher. Stay tuned. Or if you can’t wait, pick up your own copy of the cookbook.

When I left for the night, the boys were still cooking and shooting. Here’s what I missed:

Alaskan King, White King, and Copper River Sockeye: paired with English peas and a tomato, celery root and basil salad.

If you have any favorite salmon cookbooks you’d recommend, please post in the comment section.