Salmon skills: Chef/owner of Flying Fish restaurant shares her secrets

Life’s tough for a salmon.

And then it gets eaten — maybe by an orca, a sea lion, a bear, an eagle or, if you’re lucky, by you.

If the salmon (and people) are lucky, enough of them make it up the river to ensure the continuance of the species in abundance.

But back to this eating thing. Aside from getting a fresh fish and cooking it myself, one of my favorite venues for indulging is Seattle’s Flying Fish restaurant, which, you’ve surely guessed, specializes in preparing and serving seafood.

Owner and chef Christine Keff runs the show, and for fun I signed up for a salmon cooking class there recently.

It was fun, educational, occasionally raucous and eventually delicious.

Keff has a great sense of humor, even as the 40 or so participants drifted into noisy conversations among themselves.

“If you don’t listen to me, I’m going to take your wine away,” she threatened.

It reminded me of an unruly high school class with a substitute teacher.

But a fair amount of knowledge was imparted. Some of us even took it in.

How many kinds of salmon are we talking about in the Pacific Northwest? Basically five — king (chinook), silver (coho), sockeye, pink (humpback or humpies) and chum (dog, keta). Kings are the biggest, getting up to 40 pounds or more, and sockeye the smallest, averaging about four to six pounds, Keff said.

Pinks and chum make up more than 50 percent of the annual salmon run in the Northwest, which is the main reason they’re cheaper, she said, and not because they’re not good to eat.

They all taste different, though. Even two kings may have different flavors if they are from different rivers, Keff said, and it all has to do with the length and ruggedness of the river and the effort it takes to get to the spawning gravel.

When salmon gather in the brackish water near the mouth of the river before their run, they quit feeding. They will live only off body fat until they spawn and die.

A salmon may have to swim 2,000 miles up the Yukon River, and they have genetically developed to survive that trip with the highest fat content of any Northwest salmon, about 40 percent of their body weight, Keff said.

“In terms of salmon and eating salmon, fat is flavor and we really like that extra fat in the salmon,” she said. So… when you see those horrendous prices on Copper River and Yukon salmon, that’s really why. And part of it, of course, is marketing, but those salmon really do taste different, and I would say taste better.”

To illustrate, she served the class samples of different salmon, king, white king (also called ivory), sockeye, chum and coho. All were sauted in oil, with just a little salt. And there were probably 40 different opinions on what tasted best or different and how. I personally thought the sockeye had a richer flavor than the king.

About that white king: Keff explained that the color had nothing to do with feeding, as is the popular perception, but is a genetic anomaly — an albino salmon, if you like. A normal king and white king from the same river should taste about the same, with the same amount of fat.

There was a slight difference in her two king samples, because they came from different rivers.

But more questions about salmon. Fresh or frozen?

“Fresh is a technical term,” Keff said. “In a grocery store that means the fish hasn’t been previously frozen, but it is very possible that it’s been out of the water for a week — even at my restaurant, and that shocks people a lot.

“But the fish are so well cared for. I mean they’re iced down on the boat and then they’re iced on the plane and then they’re iced in the warehouse. So they’re not frozen, but they’re darn close. They haven’t reached the (freezing) point where the cells are going to split.”

Which brought her to her reasons for not using frozen fish at Flying Fish.

“The longer you leave a fish in the freezer, the more it deteriorates, so that’s the problem I have with frozen. You know what happens with frozen fish? All our cells are pretty much water, and what does water do when it gets frozen? It expands. Well, then it tends to break the walls of the cells, and then when you defrost it, all that juice that comes out, you’d rather have that in the fish.”

Previously frozen fish will tend to really dry out when cooking, she said.

As an aside, however, she noted that a reputable sushi place uses only fish that has been frozen previously (at least three days) because that kills any parasites — which cooking would normally kill.

Keff then demonstrated how to filet and skin a salmon, the key being to have a thin, sharp knife. Some tips picked up here:

To remove pinbones, lightly stroke the filet, head to tail with the edge of your knife to make them stand up a little, then use needle-nosed pliers to pull them out.

To skin the filet, lay it skin side up and get the knife started at the tail to give yourself a piece of skin to grip. Then, holding the knife level and moving it very little, pull on the skin and work it a little from side to side until you have the skin off. I must say, she held up a skin that hardly had any meat on it at all, something I’ve never accomplished. But, hey, she’s an award-winning chef.

Keff said she believed salmon tasted better if you cooked it with the skin on, whether you eat the skin or not. Removing skin is something they routinely do at the restaurant because most customers seem to prefer it that way.

“Maybe I need a better class of customer,” she said with a laugh.

Keff demonstrated two recipes for the class, a salmon cake (recipe appears with this article) and crispy skin salmon with a black rice cake and citrus olive oil sauce (The Herald will share this recipe later).

Both also were prepared by the kitchen staff and served to the class for lunch, as the smoke cleared away after Keff’s demonstration for crispy skin salmon. I would say, if her classroom kitchen needed anything, it would be an exhaust fan.

But lunch was delicious, and on top of the earlier salmon samples, more than filling. Given the generous pouring of wine, the good food, education and overall fun, the $55 charge for the class was not a bad deal, at all.

Salmon cakes

1pound skinned and boneless salmon

5ounces hot-smoked salmon

3shallots, small diced

2green onions, white and green parts, sliced thin

1cup goat cheese

Grind the fresh salmon into a mixing bowl. To make these cakes, Chef Christine Keff recommends using a meat grinder to get the right consistency. Chopping in a food processor is not a good option, she said.

(Keff also pushed the shallots and green onions through the grinder after the fish). Shred the smoked salmon and crumble the goat cheese into the bowl. Mix by hand and form into cakes, about 4 ounces each. Salt and pepper each cake to taste. Pan fry until golden brown.

Serve each cake on a pool of aioli, with a small salad alongside.

Aioli

Keff didn’t provide an aioli recipe, so you can look one up, or here’s a quick approximation I use a lot: To one cup of good-quality mayonnaise, add two garlic cloves (preferably squeezed through a garlic press, but you can finely mince it) and a tablespoon of lemon juice. While stirring, add extra-virgin olive oil until you get the desired consistency. It should be thin enough to puddle in the plate, but not too runny. Add some minced chives and parsley. Salt and pepper to taste.

Salmon-buying tips

There are a number of things to look for to determine how fresh your fish is, Christine Keff said, and it helps to be dealing with a source you trust, or at least someone that will let you smell and touch the fish.

If it smells fishy, move on. That salmon’s too far gone.

If the skin feels slimy, that’s OK, but if the flesh feels slimy, it’s starting to go. The flesh should feel firm and spring back if you indent it a little with a finger.

If you’re looking at a whole fish, the skin should be shiny and bright with minimal scale loss. If the head is still on, the eyes should be bright, clear and resilient. The gills, if still there, should be bright red.

Once you’re satisfied that the fish is fresh enough for you, don’t take it home and leave it in the refrigerator more than a day or two. The sooner you cook it, the better.

Ron Ramey