- [Sara] Sara's Weeknight Meals is made possible by USA Rice and by- - [Chef] Cooking is the first kind of love you know.

It was starting when I was child, with my grandmother, doing fresh pasta.

And now I transmit it to on the guests, is something made specially for them.

- [Narrator] Oceania Cruises, proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

(upbeat music) - [Singer] Inside out, got to figure it out, I'm feeling good and it feels good to feel good.

- [Narrator 2] Sun Sweet, amazing prunes in prune juice.

(upbeat music) - [Sara] They call Alaska the last frontier.

And when it comes to seafood, wild is where it's at.

Difference between the taste and look and everything of the farm versus the wild.

What would you say?

- [Forrest] Like a nice cup of espresso, versus instant coffee.

- Ooh.

- You know?

- Is that how we really feel?

- Yeah.

- [Sara] Today we discovered that out firsthand, as we cook Alaska salmon in the wild with a real Alaska native.

Oh, I'm so excited.

On Cedar planks, the way they've done it for centuries.

That is so gorgeous.

(upbeat music) And on the side, foraged sea asparagus, pretty hard to beat.

But if you want a simple way to make salmon at home, I've got you covered.

My salmon in a bag is salmon cooked in parchment with all sorts of yummy flavorings.

It's such a magic trick.

I just- Ooh.

You should smell what's coming out of here.

Today on Sara's Weeknight Meals, Alaskan salmon, two ways.

May the North be with you.

(soft music) Alaska's a place where every view is a postcard and the sheer natural beauty almost slaps you in the face.

It was inevitable that people would find ways to put all that nature in your mouth.

- [Darcy] This is this (indistinct) dip and this is- - [Sara] Take Jim and Darcy Michener, who make flake salt from the waters of Sitka Sound for their Alaska Sea Salt Company.

Juneau natives, Lia Heifetz and Matt Kern of Barnacle Foods use Alaskan bull kelp in pickles, sauces and seasonings.

- [Lia] Not only is it incredibly savory and delicious, it's packed with all sorts of vitamins and minerals and it's super renewable.

It can grow up to 10 inches per day.

- [Sara] Tracy LaBarge dreamed of a hot dog stand for Alaskan king crab legs.

Now Tracy's Crab Shack in Juneau serves the best legs in town.

It's just one of the stops on Midgi Moore's Juneau Food Tours.

- [Tracy] One of the things that I really loved about Juneau is just this eclectic dining scene that we have.

And it just sort of opened up Pandora's box of deliciousness.

- [Sara] In the summer, that means one thing, salmon, millions of them make the incredible journey home to spawn in these waters.

- [Forrest] As you know, salmon are migratory- - [Sara] It's a miracle of nature I learned about in Juneau from Forrest Bowers, a fish biologist at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

- Yeah, look at this amazing view of the Mendenhall Glacier.

This is spectacular, isn't it?

- Wow.

- We're near some of the salmon spawning habitat.

So salmon will spend up to three years in fresh water, then migrate to the ocean.

It's a pretty incredible journey.

They'll remain in the ocean anywhere from one to seven or eight years.

- [Sara] So they comeback specifically just to spawn?

- [Forrest] Yeah.

- [Sara] And how do they remember how to get back here?

- [Forrest] Well, it's complicated.

In the ocean, they are migrating primarily through electromagnetic cues, using the Earth's magnetic field.

Once they get near the river, then we know that they're using chemical cues.

- [Sara] So like the smell of the fresh water or something?

- [Forrest] Exactly.

- And how many of them make it back?

- Less than 5 percent?

- What happens to the rest of them, they just die of old age?

- There are a lot of things that like to eat salmon.

- [Sara] Ah.

- [Forrest] Yeah, so.

- [Sara] Well, like us.

- [Forrest] Yeah, exactly.

- [Sara] So when they come back and they spawn, then what?

Do they do it all over again?

- No, they die.

- What?

- Yeah.

It's a crazy- - That's not fair.

- It's a crazy life history.

- [Sara] In Alaska, it's illegal to farm salmon.

Alaskan salmon are always wild caught.

Difference between the taste and look and everything of the farm versus the wild, what would you say?

- [Forrest] Like a nice cup of espresso versus instant coffee.

- Ooh.

Is that how we really feel?

- Yeah.

- Yikes.

Okay.

You just said it.

Okay.

Say no more.

You live in this everyday- And that's how I found myself cooking wild sockeye- - Was born and raised here and I've just never get tired of it - [Sara] With Todd Antioquia, an Alaska native businessman and activist.

(soft music) Before we get started, I have a question.

I understand you're an Alaskan native, not a native Alaskan.

Can you tell me the difference?

- Yeah, Sara.

So I am Tlingit, Indian, Alaska native.

The Tlingit people lived in this region for more than 10,000 years.

And so, as an indigenous person, I am an Alaskan native.

- Got it.

- But, if you were born in Alaska, but you are not an indigenous person, then you would be native Alaskan.

- Oh goodness.

Okay.

- So that's the difference.

- What are we making?

- [Todd] So we are making my mom's cedar plank salmon.

My mom's name was Pat and I called her Mama, and so we're calling it Mama Pat's Salmon, cedar plank salmon.

Cedar planking is a technique that's been used in the Pacific Northwest for a long, long time.

The smoke from cedar gives a beautiful flavor and scent to the fish.

So Sara, this is a gorgeous piece of sockeye salmon.

We've already removed the belly bones and I'm just taking out the pin bones right now.

- [Sara] And if you don't have this wonderful tool, you can use tweezers.

- You can use tweezers, needle nose pliers, something like that, then you can use something like that.

- [Sara] Should I move this over here?

- [Todd] Yeah, please.

- Okay.

So we've got the salmon already and this is beautiful.

We're going make the marinade, right?

- Yes.

So, Sara, we're going to use a stick butter and I'm just going to cube this up.

- Okay.

- And well I'm doing this, if you would, you've already chopped some, about four cloves of garlic for us- - That's right.

- And maybe if you would chop up about that shallot.

- Couple tablespoons or so?

- Yes, please.

- Okay.

Thank you.

- Yeah, finely chopped.

- All right.

So this is a pretty simple marinate, I think.

- [Todd] It is.

I've tried a number of different things that would differ from my mom's original recipe.

- Oh no, I bet that didn't go over very well.

- They didn't go over quite as well.

And so I always go back to mom's recipe.

So I'm going to take this and put the garlic in.

So we need now, two tablespoons worth of minced shallot.

(soft music) - [Sara] You want this next?

- Yes, please.

I'll take the juice of about one lemon.

So I'm going to squeeze it into here.

This lemon gives it a nice bright flavor.

And now I'll just ask you to tightly pack two tablespoons of the brown sugar.

And then two tablespoons of soy sauce.

- Okay now, I noticed we're using low sodium.

- We are, and that's my preference because it gives you an opportunity to adjust the salt to your liking.

So we're going to add a little bit of salt after this- - [Sara] As well?

- [Todd] As well.

About half a teaspoon.

But if you don't have light soy sauce and you're using regular soy sauce, I wouldn't suggest adding any additional salt.

- Okay.

That makes sense.

- [Todd] I'm a fan of crushed black peppers, so.

- [Sara] Me too, big time.

And that's it, huh?

- That's it.

We're going to put this on the flame here and simmer it for about 10 minutes, to just enough to cook the shallots and garlic.

So Sara, these are the cedar planks that we're going to barbecue the salmon on.

And we got these at the grocery store from the butcher.

So they've been soaking for about three hours.

One of the things that we're going to do, that's a little different than the instructions, we're actually going to put these on the barbecue and preheat them and actually get them smoking.

I find that the essence of the cedar permeates the salmon better that way.

- [Sara] What if you only soaked them a half an hour?

Bad idea?

Might catch fire?

- [Todd] They might catch fire, yeah.

- [Sara] Well, shall we get these on the grill.

- Yeah.

- Now that's, what, 450?

- But in order to get it smoking, you need to have it pretty hot.

I would say 450 to 500.

- [Sara] About how many minutes per side?

- About 10 minutes to start smoking on the one side, you'll actually might hear it pop a little bit, and that's okay.

And then I would flip it over for about another 10 minutes.

Next we're going to put together one of my favorite side dishes to accompany to salmon and that's a sea asparagus.

- Okay.

- And that's- - I can't wait to learn about that.

- Yeah.

- I've never had it.

- I'm excited to tell you about it, but let's start though with some bacon and we'll get that cooking first and then I'll- - Oh, it has bacon in it?

- Yeah, it does.

(bacon sizzling) - [Sara] This is the strangest looking thing.

Of course, just strange 'cause I haven't really seen it before.

Can I taste it?

- [Todd] Yes, please do.

- It's quite salty.

- Yes.

- But not too salty.

- Yes.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

And it's excellent for you too.

It's a super food for us.

It's been rinsed with water because it is so, so salty right out of the ocean.

- Okay.

But that doesn't go in just yet.

- It doesn't go in just yet.

- Okay, so I'm going to park that over here.

- Yeah.

Let's see.

Let's go ahead and slice up that onion.

- [Sara] What if you can't get sea asparagus?

- [Todd] We like to just, even this recipe that we're going to use, actually would work well with the regular store bought asparagus.

- Oh.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Even, they're not related remotely, but that's funny that's it's- I guess 'cause it's long and thin.

That's why it's called that.

- [Todd] That's right.

- I love them.

This is talking to us.

- Yeah it sure is.

- It sounds like popcorn.

- Yep.

We are going to base the salmon about halfway through its cooking process, so.

- [Sara] And you don't want to use the same marinade that we put on the raw fish.

- So Sara, I think that the marinades cool enough now for us to start brushing it on.

We don't want ever to have it too hot, 'cause it would start cooking the fish.

We do want to get those little tasty bits on the salmon itself.

- [Sara] All right.

So we'll let that sit.

- Yep.

- While the planks plank away, talk to us.

- [Todd] But I think our bacon's about ready to come off.

- Doesn't that bacon smell good?

(bacon sizzling) - [Todd] I'm going to drain just about everything except for about a tablespoon of the fat.

And we'll use some of this later too.

- [Sara] Would you want me to pop the onions in?

- [Todd] Yes please.

- [Sara] So do you think we can get these cooking?

- Yeah.

Let's get them on the barbecue now, we're all ready to go.

The planks are ready and preheated.

So yeah, this is a great time.

Let's bring this over and if I could ask you to open up the- - Sure.

- Barbecue, then I'm going to just use my clean hands here to- - You're impeccably clean hands.

- That's right.

Lay them right on.

- [Sara] Oh, I hear the sizzle.

- Yeah.

- I hear the sizzle.

- [Todd] So we preheated the barbecue to about 500 during the process.

- [Sara] But now?

- [Todd] But now we're going to lower it down to about 400, 375 to 400 or so.

- [Sara] Okay.

- [Todd] If the barbecue's too hot, it will squeeze the fat out right away and you lose all of that wonderful flavor.

- Oh, that's like that little milky stuff you sometimes see in salmons, 'cause the heat was too hot.

- That's right.

- Wow.

- That's right.

So we want to prevent that, so.

Yeah, we're going to take the onions out and then toss them with some little bit of balsamic vinegar.

- [Sara] So I think the sweetness in the balsamic will really offset the saltiness of the sea asparagus.

- [Todd] Absolutely.

- [Sara] Good idea.

- [Todd] And then we're going to- - [Sara] Base the salmon.

Oh wow.

- [Todd] Look at that.

- [Sara] That is so gorgeous.

- [Todd] Looks good.

We're going to put the sea asparagus in, and so I'm going to ask you to- - How much more of this?

- I would do, yeah, a good tablespoon.

Let's see how that goes.

There's quite a bit.

So yeah, go ahead and add it all back in.

- [Sara] Ah, what the heck.

- [Todd] Yeah.

- More is better.

- That's right.

- Is that enough?

- [Todd] That's plenty.

- [Sara] Okay.

- [Todd] That's plenty.

- So this was foraged by your husband, you said?

- [Todd] Yeah, sea asparagus is only harvestable, just over a very short time window.

- Oh, is that true?

- So my cousins were harvesting in cake last weekend, so they invited him down to go pick with them and he gathered all this for us.

- [Sara] What do you think, those are turning a beautiful color.

- [Todd] I think this is great.

This is looking good.

Do you want to try it?

- Yes.

How did you know, I'm leaning in there.

Oh my goodness.

They were good raw, but I think they're even- oh my goodness.

- Yeah.

A little bit of, a little bit of flavor when we toss it with those onions.

I think we might be ready here in just a second, so.

- [Sara] And then where does the bacon come in?

- [Todd] So, I think we're going to use about half of this and I think, ask you to crumble it maybe, as you put it on.

- Okay.

Okay.

- [Todd] If you were using store bought asparagus, I would use all of that.

- [Sara] So I think we should check the salmon again, right?

- [Todd] Absolutely Sara.

I can smell it and it's definitely time.

- All right.

Wow.

Okay, so what are we looking for?

- [Todd] You can see how the fat is just finally squeezing from the thickest part.

And we're going to just test it too, just like you would test a steak- - [Sara] Steak, yeah.

- [Todd] And sure enough, it feels like it's- - [Sara] It's pretty firm.

- [Todd] Feels like we're right on.

So we're ready to go.

- [Sara] All right.

Should we take it off?

- [Todd] Let's go ahead and take it off.

So we're just going to grab that pan- - Let me come on over.

- And we're going to keep it right on the planks.

- [Sara] Oh really?

- [Todd] Yep.

Instead of- and we can even serve it off them.

The nice thing is that, we'll continue to kind of scent the salmon too.

You got that okay?

- [Sara] Mm-hmm.

- [Todd] There we go.

Let's go in and eat.

Shall we?

- [Sara] Oh yes, let's.

- [Todd] Yeah.

(upbeat music) Here we go.

- Isn't that wonderful.

- [Todd] There we go.

- [Sara] Does that look like it usually does when you all do it?

Yeah, that marinade looks wonderful.

- [Todd] What do you think?

- Oh, so good.

- Oh my God.

Woo.

- [Speaker 4] Really good.

- [Sara] Having fun yet?

- [Todd] Yeah.

(laughing) - Is it as good as always?

- It's- yeah.

- It just- you're there with mom.

- Fills our souls.

- [Sara] It's so fresh.

- [Todd] As an Alaska native person, who have been nourished by salmon for millennia and it's one of our foundational staples.

We feed it not only to ourselves, but the people that we love and care about in our community too.

So, it's very much at the soul of who we are as a people.

- To that note, I think we need to have a toast.

To the salmon and to the Tlingit tribe.

- Cheers.

- Here, here.

Yes.

- Cheers.

- Yes, to our people, to the salmon.

Yeah, (indistinct).

- [Sara] So we must now have more.

(upbeat music) - There you go.

- Thank you.

- You're welcome.

(upbeat music) - My salmon in a bag is salmon cooked in parchment with all sorts of yummy flavorings.

And it all comes together, makes its own sauce.

Nothing can go anywhere and the salmon is perfectly cooked.

But, I'm going to start with the side dish.

And one of my husband's favorites, which is borscht beets.

Now the husband happens to be Jewish- Oh, by the way, let me say that beets are a twofer, you can certainly do something with the greens as well.

And I will later on.

Just park this over here.

Don't throw these out, they're yummy and they've got lots of nutrition.

But anyway, the husband is Jewish and growing up, he used to drink cold borscht in a bottle, straight up, a quart and he drank one a day and he drank it like lemonade.

I'm going to steam my beets.

And one of my favorites, a hippy steamer, I call him a hippy steamer, 'cause I had him in college.

And why I like steaming beets, as opposed to boiling beets, is they don't get so watery.

There we go.

While those are cooking, I'm just going to get my pickled onions started, 'cause what goes into my borsch beets are pickled onions, sour cream and dill.

And the pickled onions, we start with a red onions, just 'cause it's so pretty and when you add vinegar to it, which I'm going to, it turns a gorgeous color.

I'm going to slice them thin.

And I'm going to use just about half of this guy because it's a big onion.

You just want, you know, we don't want this to be all onions, we want it to be mostly beets.

So I'll just use this half.

Anyway, the husband just loves beets and he is always trying to get me to cook them and I've come, in my old age, to really love beets.

I don't know, it's one of those things.

Maybe it just takes a little time to fall in love.

Okay.

(knife chopping) And then we're going to combine this cold with some balsamic vinegar.

I'm going to show you in just a minute.

And sugar, salt and caraway seed, all those things that you often think of as being perfect with beets.

So a third of a cup of balsamic, we're using red balsamic.

This is a wonderful ingredient.

What's so great about balsamic is that, it's naturally sweet, it's how it's produced.

So it provides a little bit of sugar, as well as, it's vinegary, it's a well-balanced vinegar, as well as it's vinegary taste.

We are going to add a little bit of salt, half a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of sugar.

Oh, and we can't forget our favorite ingredient here, a teaspoon of caraway seeds.

If you hate caraway, for some reason, leave it out.

This is not a fixed recipe.

So just up to a boil, that's really all we need to do.

Okay.

I'm going to let that do it's thing.

So we're going to do salmon.

What's great is, you put a whole bunch of things in a bag, the salmon with all of these flavorings, you could have used vegetables as well too, but I'm going to go the citrus, chili, olive and rosemary route.

So, this is a rather large orange.

First, we're going to cut it in half.

Boy, isn't that beautiful?

And I'm going to cut my lemon in half too.

And then we're going to juice both of them, the lemon and the orange.

This would be wonderful with grapefruit too.

I may not quite use all this juice.

Here comes my lemon.

I love these, these reamers, they're so great.

Two tablespoons of olive oil.

Now I'm going to slice these guys and I'm going to cut them in half first and the thinner you slice them the better.

Other things you can put in a fish in a bag are carrots, broccoli, peas.

So there are our oranges.

I'm going to slice this lemon.

There we go.

Now I'm going to chop up some oil cured olives.

Here's about a half a cup of oil cured olives.

You could use kalamata olives.

You can use any olives that you like, including no olives.

A serrano chili, I don't know what possessed me to put a serrano chili in here.

Fish is sort of bland, salmon is actually more robust than most fish, but it needs acid, it needs heat, it needs excitement.

I'm going to leave the ribs and the seeds in there, 'cause I want all that heat and I'm crosscut slicing it 'cause it looks so pretty.

We'll put them right there.

Okay, now we need about a quarter cup of rosemary, chopped.

But isn't that beautiful?

That's a still life right there.

So I'm going to get my salmon.

Now I'm doing something unorthodox.

This is fish in a bag, as I mentioned before, also called fish en papillote in French.

And the way you normally would do it, would be a single portion at a time.

But hey, it's a family night, I'm feeding four people.

I don't want to make four bags and I don't have room for four bags in my oven.

So I'm going to do them all at once.

So, I'm going to start by seasoning the fish on both sides.

And this is about four to five ounce pieces, which you're like, wow, that's such a small piece, but really it isn't, salmon is very rich.

Okay.

Now we are ready to assemble.

So what I have here is a piece of parchment and I've gotten a rather large piece because we need a lot of room, since I have four pieces of salmon.

Fold your piece of parchment in half.

But I want you to notice how thick the salmon is, that side, say about an inch and a half.

The general rule when cooking fish is it's 10 minutes for every inch of thickness in a 400 degree oven.

Okay, so now I'm going to put it all together.

I put half of the oranges and half of the lemons at the bottom and sprinkle half of the rosemary on top of that.

And then we're going to put the fish.

You need to leave a little bit of a gap between each piece.

If they're right next to each other, they don't cook properly.

Okay, so there's the fish.

Okay, now, we are going to add our olives and then I'm going to top that all with the serrano, the rest of our rosemary and drizzle the whole thing with the orange juice, lemon juice and olive oil.

And finally, the rest of our citrus.

Now, other things you can put in here, besides all the vegetables I just mentioned, oftentimes people will put in white wine, a few pats of butter and other herbs are wonderful.

Here we go.

So you're going to start up here in this corner and what you do, pretend this is paper airplane class, you fold and you really fold it hard.

Now, this right now, is where air can come out, you want to cover that with your next fold.

We want to try to make this airtight.

It may not be completely airtight, it's sort of hard when you have four pieces in there.

Okay, so now we're turning the corner.

You keep covering your prior opening and then, here's what I'm going to do, you take your trustee, very clean, paperclips and you put them where you can see perhaps it's puffing up a bit.

My French chef teachers would be horrified, but they'll never know.

Okay, now this is ready to go and you want to set it up pretty soon before you pop it in the oven because with all that juice, although the parchment is non-stick and somewhat impermeable, but it will get wet and you might have a hole in it.

So I'm going to go pop this in the oven and give it 18 minutes and quickly, while it's cooking, and the way we know it's done, it's going to be nice and puffed and brown and we'll take a little peek at the fish in there.

I'm going to get my beet salad done.

I've got some beets that I already cooked before.

Let me just show you here.

They're cooling off.

So we have our onions.

There we go.

They're going to go in there.

And then we are going to add a cup of sour cream.

You could use the light sour cream, you could also use the Greek yogurt, which is, the zero fat would be absolutely acceptable.

Let me cut a few, chop a a little bit of dill here.

If you don't like dill and some people don't, you could certainly use chives or you could use no herbs at all.

And that's what makes this sort of borscht like, is the sour cream.

It was just me using a fancy title for the husband.

And that wasn't too hard, right?

The thing about beets is they just take time to cook.

I like to use an egg slicer to slice beets 'cause it's the right tool and it makes the work so fast.

All right.

Okay, I'm going to go down and check the salmon.

I bet you it's done.

Sometimes it doesn't get that brown.

I'm just going to- I expect it to be brown, but if it's not, it's not the end of the world.

Let me just test it quickly.

And if you should open it up and it's not done here, let me see, I'm just going to, yeah, that goes through pretty easily.

Let me get my plate here.

Now, remember this is four portions.

(upbeat music) It's such a magic trick.

I just- Ooh, you should smell what's coming out of here.

Wow.

Isn't that just beautiful?

And you see all this yummy sauce down here, you want to take advantage of it.

Oh, and I can see it's perfectly cooked.

So the way you tell is by sticking the knife through, as I did, if it goes through easily, again, fish cooks from the outside in, if it goes through easily, that means it's cooked all the way through.

If there's a little bit of resistance, particularly with salmon, just a little bit is fine.

'Cause you like to have salmon a little bit medium rare.

Here goes our beets and there we go.

Wow.

That is just perfect.

This is enough to make anybody happy.

So, I hope you try my fish in a bag recipe and you have a lot of fun with it.

Take it for a walk, take it all over the world.

Try all sorts of combinations.

(upbeat music) For recipes, videos, and more go to our website, saramoulton.com.

Sara's Weeknight Meals is made possible by USA Rice, Sun Sweet and by- - [Chef] Cooking is the first kind of love you know.

It was starting when I was child with my grandmother doing fresh pasta.

And now I transmit it to on the guests, is something made especially for them.

- [Narrator] Oceania Cruises, proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

(upbeat music)