Review of The Fishes & Dishes Cookbook

Recipe(s) in this post:
Crispy Pan-Fried Salt & Pepper Shrimp with Jalapeños
Jade Salmon Dumplings with Green Curry Sauce

Commercial fishing drew me and my friends to pre-pipeline Alaska in the early 1970s. We grew up on Puget Sound, and left without looking back.  In those years, we worked in canneries, hoping for lots of overtime, or on boats for a percentage of the catch, hoping our captains would be on the fish. It’s been 35 years since I was on a fishing boat, but if I shut my eyes, I remember it as if it were yesterday: the feel of a boat rolling in waves, the pull of a drift net dropping into water, the excitement of fish hitting a net, the sound of splashing salmon and hydraulics, the struggle of picking tangled fish out of a net. When I was young, most women on fishing boats were hired as boat cooks and disparagingly referred to as “5%ers,” referring to their 5% crew share, usually smaller than what male deckhands received. Of course, when nets were full, 5%ers were expected to pick fish alongside deckhands; their tasks were rarely limited to cooking. In the last few decades, times have changed for women in Alaska’s fishing industry, as they have in most US work places. Now, women successfully run … Continue reading →