When I look up “fish fry” in the dictionary or in Wikipedia, I don’t find what I expect. The fish at a dictionary fish fry are literally fried. That may be appropriate for points east, but for a northwesterner, it is an appalling prospect. Around Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia, the proper subject matter of a fish fry is salmon baked over a smoky open fire. J. G. Swan’s recipe, that I have placed in the sidebar, which he recorded at Willapa Bay in the mid-nineteeth century, is almost our exact family recipe for salmon and the recipe for a Salish fish fry
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Fish fries are high tradition in our family. I remember going to fish fries when I was a preschooler and my cousin, who is even older than I am, remembers fish fries at our great grandparents house. The family has has been holding fish fries since the days when my great-grandfather first arrived in Washington Territory over a hundred years ago.
My cousin held a small fish fry on the farm last weekend. I called it his potlatch and when I think about it, that may be more fitly chosen than when I first thought of it.
I have to take a moment to say a few things about my cousin. He is six years older than I am. We were raised in a family that was close both in proximity and spirit. Time and mortality has spread us out now, but my great grandparents house, my grandparents house, and my cousins houses were all clustered within a mile radius. Through adolescence, my cousin led our baby boom cohort through life: a drivers license, girl friends, joining the Marines, living away from the family, getting married, my cousin was always the leader. And, I admit, he was my idol. And as an idol, he always had a minute for me, and I reveled in those minutes. Needless to say, my cousin is a special person to me.
The years could have treated my cousin better. A divorce separated him both from his family and the house and acreage into which he poured his soul. Physical ailments have transformed a robust craftsman into a person forced to factor his physical capabilities into every decision. Still, my cousin is a respected man with many friends.
And a generous man. Fisherman friends gave him a salmon. Not just any salmon, but a sleek, fat monarch that would turn the head of any chef on Puget Sound. My cousin works for the Lummi Nation so it could have come from them. That would have been traditional. In our family, all the best salmon all come from the tribe, and last weekend, instead of hoarding that fine fish for himself, my cousin announced a fish fry.
He roasted the perfect salmon over a smoky vine maple fire, inviting a circle of relatives and friends to join in a festival of mutual good will. If you read cook books and the menus of places like Anthony’s and Ivar’s Salmon House, the wood for roasting salmon is alder, but that is not the tradition in my family. We always use green vine maple. Green vine maple smoke is sweet and gives the salmon a sharper tang than alder. Not that alder is inferior, I have enjoyed many meals of alder smoked salmon, but alder is not vine maple, not the flavor of salmon for this tribe of German descended Bostons.
And for some elusive reason, the vine maple smoke, the fat salmon, and the grace of the tribe around the table, made the occasion a potlatch.