Anchorage's first newspaper recipe 🗞️

Notes on: SALMON, dry-brining for dinner, a new way to fillet, playground b-ball, Thai Village, gin and tonics, gluten-free peach muffins, quick pickles, working women, local news and sourdough

The Sunday Anchorage Daily News in print (with dog bones from the carrier). (Julia O’Malley photo)

Last year, before National Endowment for the Humanities grants got canceled, I worked for several months on an application for a food history project about what used to be called the “Women’s Page” in Anchorage’s newspapers. That’s where local food news lived before papers launched food sections in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

The earliest recipe I could find came from 1917, when there were only a few hundred women in Anchorage. It was submitted by Edith Plowman, a teacher in Hope, for potatoes, then our signature crop. “Pare, wash and put in boiling water. When done, pour off water, salt and shake kettle. You will find the potatoes will be nice and dry,” she wrote. It appeared beneath a gossip column and next to an ad for “WOMENS WEARING APPAREL” at a shop called Dougherty’s. In later years, I found stories about both of my grandmothers. None included recipes. (Neither was known for their cooking.) They were featured because they had jobs.

From a women’s page article about my grandmother’s novel decision to work outside the home, published in the Anchorage Daily Times in 1959.

I have been thinking a lot lately about local news. I grew up in the newsroom at the Anchorage Daily News, starting at 16, so it has always been my teacher. Way back in the day, I used to just follow reporters around Anchorage, to courtrooms, the scenes of house fires, school board meetings and, perhaps my favorite, to lunch. This is when I first tasted pho in a strip mall off Tudor and gelato, mangos and Manchego at the *new* New Sagaya City Market.

Local news can make you love a place. It isn’t just the stories — it’s the whole package, the grocery ads and quirky underwriters, the photos, obituaries, call-in shows, Jackie Purcell’s earmuffs, familiar reporter bylines and broadcaster voices. When you tune in, you pick up the longer story of the city in daily chapters, you learn how to spot history in the architecture and get a to know the personalities of public figures — as my editor Sheila Toomey used to say, “the characters in the soap opera.” Best thing: you can call and talk to people who make news here. Give them ideas. Tell them when they’re wrong. There’s no greater accountability than living here.

A friend of mine who fishes out of Naknek told me once that you can go from your boat to your truck to the store and back again, listening to the news on KDLG, without missing a word. Everybody listens. But here, lately, my pediatrician reads the New York Times but not the ADN. The principal at my kid’s school gets her news from Instagram. My hairdresser only knows what clients tell her. My plumber favors Joe Rogan.

I get it. I got so sucked into the dispiriting dumpster fire of national politics I had to buy an app to keep me from getting distracted/anxious reading the news all the time. (Which I pay to subscribe to. I know, I see the irony.) But local news belongs to us. I recently re-subscribed to the print paper in an effort to get off the damn phone. The Sunday edition showed up with a biscuit for my dog tucked inside. The horoscope said “a spark of inspiration could catch me by surprise.” And there was that old, irreplaceable print crossword puzzle. This week, your Love Anchorage assignment is to switch on public radio while you’re making coffee or pick up a paper on Sunday as part of your routine for a while. See how if changes how you feel about the place.

So, what’s for dinner? The garden lettuce is out of hand so I am eating salads that involve massive piles of greens and herbs, using a dressing recipe from my favorite Italian restaurant in New York, Via Carota. (Look at this salad!) I also got over-stocked on cucumbers so I made this recipe for quick refrigerator pickles, subbing in fresh farmers-market dill, and it was a spicy hit. And my gluten-free brother came to visit, so I threw some diced peaches into my most favorite, extra-versatile, go-to GF base recipe for crumble-topped peach cobbler muffins. Aside from that, I’m making A LOT of salmon. Besides grilling fillets, I have been into dry-brining them with salt before frying and using a thermometer to get the perfect temperature (maybe 115 degrees?). Dry brine seals in moisture, turns up the flavor and makes the skin crispy and delicious. Give it a try.

Dry brined, crispy-skinned salmon. (Julia O’Malley photo)

In semi-related food dilemmas, I have come into possession of two kohlrabi bulbs and I have zero inspiration. Help?

Little treats: After a soccer game at Clark Middle School the other day, I made a pilgrimage to a favorite Thai place from childhood, Thai Village Restaurant, in an old Pizza Hut building on Muldoon, just to see if the spicy mint noodles were the way I remember. They were. I also ordered a new dish off the vegetarian menu, kang kiew warn, a green curry with eggplant and mixed vegetables that I loved. I got a kick out of this useful video on how to feed your sourdough by Bristol Bay fisherwoman/cook Susie Brito. And I am obsessed with my friend Natasha’s dad’s unusual way of filleting fish in portions that I plan to try today on 10 sockeye that came home from the Kenai last night. The most delicious beverage I have had all summer, encountered first at The Potato in McCarthy, is this Top Note tonic called “Alpine Spritz,” which is flavored with grapefruit zest and kaffir lime. I drink it alone but it can also be paired with a botanical gin, like Amalga’s (recommend a little fresh basil in that gin and tonic), or with espresso or amaro. (It’s in stock right now at La Bodega.) Finally, this “Indie Alaska” video about a guy who fixes basketball hoops, produced by Alaska Public Media, will restore faith in humanity. (PSA: Last week, Congress voted to defund Alaska’s small-town radio and television stations. Find and give to your local station here.)

If this newsletter gives your Wednesday mornings a lift and you’d like to invest in paper crossword puzzle habits and filleting hacks, consider upgrading your free subscription here. Subscriptions start at $1.50 a week or $8 a month and give you access to my archive of newsletter recipes and restaurant mini-reviews, early notice about events and workshops, and entry into my occasional birthday cake raffle. You can also choose to be a founding subscriber, doubling down on this Alaska loving food/writing project for $240.

Write to me with your favorite (any?) uses for kohlrabi, memories about your first mango and experiments with frying salmon on parchment (recipe above ☝️).

And anything. Really.

Thank you, always, for reading.

Julia

P.S.: For my newest recipes and access to many stories I link to, subscribe to the Anchorage Daily News and Edible Alaska. Search all my recipes and writing at juliaomalley.com.

P.P.S: Here’s my littlest kid with his first fish on the Kenai.

(Sara Boario photo)

*Eagle-eyed editor-for-hire Egan Millard reads this newsletter. Hire him. 🦅*