Last week I got an inexplicable craving for salmon cakes. This has been one of our standard pantry dinners for years – cheap, easy and healthy – but we hadn’t had it for a while. I made an executive decision and picked up a can of Alaskan salmon at the co-op.

Oddly enough, this may have been the first time I ever made fish cakes myself. My husband and I have divisions of labor in the kitchen, not always logical, and he’s generally in charge of curries, Thai beef stirfry, burgers, kebabs, and salmon cakes. He must have been busy with something else on this occasion, since I ended up making them myself. Fortunately for me, these are really, really simple. We use a recipe from the Joy of Cooking as our base, then add flavorings as we please. This batch was very basic, as I was also cooking Brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes and wasn’t really focusing.

The version I made was just canned salmon (with a little skin and bone mashed in – I rather like the texture, and it’s full of calcium), matzo meal, egg, salt, pepper and parsley. Other times we’ve added red pepper flakes, herbs, or breadcrumbs instead of matzo, but I wouldn’t say we’d gotten really inventive with them. We usually make garlic mayonnaise to liven things up. What do you think would be good in fish cakes?

Salmon Cakes

Adapted from Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer. Easily scaled up or down depending on the size of your can of salmon.

• 2 cups canned salmon meat, with or without skin and bones
• 1/2 cup cracker crumbs or matzo meal
• 2 eggs
• salt
• pepper
• chopped parsley

Mash all the ingredients together in a bowl. Shape into patties and fry in butter or oil until browned. Serve hot with garlic mayonnaise.

Recently, and perhaps foolishly, I accepted a challenge from a fellow blogger. Nothing to do with blogging, or even food – instead, the challenge is to hold a plank position for four straight minutes. Our deadline is September, and currently we’ve each managed a bit over two minutes. In a word? Ouch. If you’ve ever done plank exercises, I suspect you’ll feel my pain.

A much more pleasant type of planking is the sort you do with fish. We tried this again recently, with some gorgeous king salmon from Skagit’s Own Fish Market. Planking is a traditional technique in the Northwest, but it’s hard to find fish cookbooks that even mention it, let along give detailed instructions. So we’ve been somewhat making it up as we go along.

The idea here is to build a fairly low fire in your grill, then lay the fish on a well-soaked cedar or alder plank (you can make or buy these) and position it away from the direct heat, and cover. The fish cooks slowly in the smoke, protected by the wet wood, producing very tender, flavorful fish. It’s fine if the plank smolders a bit, but you don’t want it to actually catch on fire – keep a spray bottle handy. It’s supposed to take anywhere from 20-30 minutes, but I think we overdid ours a little – the fire might have been a bit too hot.

We served our salmon with grilled asparagus, salad and a not-very-successful homemade aioli (it was more like salad dressing than mayonnaise). It was tasty enough, and made a rather good salmon salad sandwich the following day. On the whole I’d say this was a good dinner, but had room for improvement.

Have you planked, either the exercise or the fish? Any tips?

I wasn’t sure there was any higher calling for alder-smoked salmon than a bagel and cream cheese, but this risotto may have changed my mind.

Some friends brought this salmon to a party at our house (very good friends, indeed). It was from Pure Food in the Pike Place Market, according to the bag, and it was the best smoked salmon I have ever eaten, juicy and tender with just the right amount of smoke and sweet. I was trying to think of some way to use a bunch of it at once, and Jon said, “What about in that risotto we’re having on Thursday?” Hmmm.

I’d never used smoked salmon in a risotto before, so I kept it simple. Shallots cooked in butter, then the Arborio, then white wine, then light homemade chicken stock until the rice was almost done. I stirred in a bowlful of frozen peas, then added the shredded salmon at the very end with some cream and parmigiano. A green salad on the side. Perfect.

And the leftovers, fried until crusty, with an egg on the side. You could make this specifically for breakfast, for a brunch party. I think it would be a hit.

Now what shall we do with the rest of the salmon?

Even after I had learned how to cook most things, I had no idea how to deal with a piece of salmon. It was embarrassing, but I was sufficiently terrified by the idea of cooking, not just salmon, but any fish, that I almost never tried. I was scared of it being raw, but I hated it overcooked. So I just skipped the whole thing, which is really a shame when you live in the  Pacific Northwest.

Enter that saviour of timid chefs everywhere, Mark Bittman! All of his recipes tend to have a comforting, you-can-do-this sort of tone, with simple techniques and ingredients. I discovered a stovetop-to-oven method of cooking salmon fillets in his book The Minimalist Cooks at Home, and it worked so well I wouldn’t cook salmon any other way for years. It repeatedly produced fish that was moist, tender and cooked all the way through. It’s simple: crust the fish with herbs and spices, melt butter in an oven-safe skillet over medium-high heat, add the fish seasoning-side down and cook one minute. Flip and cook one more minute. Put the pan in the oven and cook about five minutes or until done how you like. Easy.

Over time I’ve mucked around with both the cooking method and the seasoning from the original recipe. I now usually just panfry my salmon in a nonstick skillet at medium heat, and flavor it with cumin and salt. Every once in a while, though, it’s fun to revisit Bittman’s original flavorings of rosemary, orange and fennel.

Rosemary is one of the herbs I’m never likely to run out of – the bush under our deck is over three feet high and four feet wide. I always pick more than I need just to keep the shrub in check a bit. For this recipe I probably used the leaves from two six-inch twigs.

The rosemary gets chopped and mixed with the zest of one orange…

…and about a teaspoon of fennel seed, crushed in a mortar (or spice grinder if that’s easier).

Mix in some coarse salt and pepper, and spread the spices over the salmon fillets. Heat butter or oil in a skillet and carefully lay the pieces spice-side down, hopefully not spilling the topping all over the pan. You want the seasonings to form a nice crust over the fish.

Cooking just on the stovetop, I probably keep the fillets in the pan about six minutes, flipping occasionally. I like my salmon a bit rare inside – if you like yours more done I’d use the oven method, or turn down the heat so the fish doesn’t overcook on the outside.

We ate this with roasted beets and parsnips, and a salad with a strong mustard dressing. The flavors are bold and a bit sweet, and I loved how the orange in the fish went with the beets.

It was the asparagus’ fault. Last weekend Jon went to the farmer’s market by himself (it was my Saturday to work) and picked up some unusually beautiful Eastern Washington asparagus. Then he found some really attractive sockeye steaks. It all looked so good, but it needed a little something extra…I decided it was about time I made another attempt at homemade mayonnaise.

I’d been scared of making mayonnaise for a while. The one time I tried, I used the large food processor for too little sauce and it didn’t emulsify properly. But I’ve watched chefs make aioli at cooking classes, and it didn’t look hard – then there was John Thorne’s essay about learning to make mayonnaise with nothing but a plate, a fork, one egg yolk, a little vinegar and some oil. If making it by hand was really that easy, it seemed like I had no reason not to try. Besides, I know I can make a very good hollandaise, so what was I afraid of? I checked proportions in a few cookbooks and gave it a whirl.

First, the oil. I decided that I didn’t want the mayonnaise to taste too overwhelmingly of olive oil, so I went back and forth between adding olive and canola oils. The balance worked out pretty well, although I might go even lighter on the olive oil next time (our house oil, Colavita, is very strong and grassy tasting). The canola, in its decanter, was easier to add slowly.

Then the eggs. We only needed a small amount of sauce for dinner, so I used a single egg yolk. Adding just a splash each of lemon juice and champagne vinegar, I whisked it up well, then added a good pinch of salt and started dripping in oil. As the oil was absorbed I began adding it a little faster, and soon it all began to emulsify into a lovely buttercream consistency. My arm also started to fall off, so we traded back and forth on the whisk.

After it seemed like we might have the right amount of oil beaten in, I crushed a single garlic clove into the mayonnaise and tasted for salt. The egg flavor was pronounced, with just a touch of lemon – I think it might be nice with a bit more lemon and a bit less vinegar next time, but with the garlic this worked well.

It was amazing on the grilled asparagus. Our wine was a bright, low-alcohol albariño that cut through the sauce, and the fish was grilled rare with a touch of cumin. A really good dinner. And now I know I can make mayonnaise!

I am ridiculously impressed with myself – I made gravlax! Why this should seem to be such an accomplishment, I have no idea – dumping a lot of salt and seasonings on a nice piece of salmon and turning it twice a day isn’t really a lot of work. But I am just really, really pleased with the results.

I discovered I liked gravlax a few years ago, after a family visit to Restaurant Österreich in Leavenworth. Then I realized that I liked lox quite a lot, after a number of bagel breakfasts with J’s family. Lately, I snap up cured salmon wherever I see it – which isn’t very often, in this neck of the woods. In the Pacific Northwest, salmon seems to come fresh, smoked or nothing – salt-cured fish just isn’t happening. So when I saw a very reassuringly simple and well-illustrated article on making gravlax in a recent issue of Saveur, I decided my time had come. There was fresh dill at the farmer’s market, and our local grocery has had beautiful sides of sockeye in the fish case for $7.99 a pound this week, so I got the biggest manageable piece I could and set to work.

According to the article, the seasonings are really flexible. Dill, fennel and caraway give a nice traditional flavor, but you could do almost anything. The important thing is the salt, and maybe a bit of alcohol to give extra firmness and flavor – the recipe used aquavit, I used vodka.

The result? The fish was salty, but had a nice dill/caraway flavor and a lovely translucence. We ate our first meal from it with rye Wasa crackers, cream cheese and a bit of Dijon mustard, along with a glass of Willow Crest Rocking L rosé, which was perfect with the gravlax.

Gravlax

adapted from the July 2008 issue of Saveur (original recipe here)

• One fillet of sockeye salmon, about 1.5 pounds
• 1 cup roughly chopped fresh dill
• 2 tsp caraway seeds
• 2 tsp fennel seeds
• 1 1/2 Tbsp ground white pepper
• 1/2 cup kosher salt
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• a splash of vodka

Coarsely grind the fennel and caraway, and mix with the salt, sugar and white pepper. Spread out a sheet of plastic wrap and sprinkle half of the salt mixture over it, then lay the fish (skin side down) on top. Sprinkle the rest of the salt mixture over the fish, and pour over the vodka. Wrap tightly with more plastic wrap and put in a ziploc bag, then put in the fridge.

Turn the fish every 12 hours, massaging the salt and liquid around to make sure all surfaces are in contact with the brine. After 48-72 hours, the fish should be firm and cured all the way through. Unwrap, rinse thoroughly, and press the fish into more fresh chopped dill. Slice very thinly and eat. Keeps for two weeks (we have yet to verify this).