Fall updates: call for recipes, news on the Makah Ozette potato, and a wild salmon habitat volunteer opportunity

Do you have a recipe for fall?

As the days get chillier, many of us naturally find ourselves warmed by the kitchen as a stew or sauce bubbles away on the stove top or a roast cooks in the oven. And if we are lucky, a friend, family member or neighbor will have shared their recipe for the perfect fall dish. We’re hoping to offer some inspirational dishes to our Slow Food Seattle community. For our upcoming newsletter, we would like to feature your recipe! We’re looking for savory and sweet harvest recipes to share with your fellow Slow Food Seattle members.

From the recipes submitted, we will choose two of them to feature on the next Slow Food Seattle newsletter. If you have a seasonal recipe or perhaps a Thanksgiving favorite you would like to share in our upcoming newsletter, please email it with your name, the neighborhood you live in, and how long you have been a member to us at info@slowfoodseattle.org.

Help the Mid Puget Sound Salmon Enhancement Group:
A volunteer opportunity to restore wild salmon habitat

Photo courtesy of Mid Sound Fisheries Enhancement Group

Most of us have enjoyed a piece of grilled wild salmon a time or two. Some of us have even had the excitement of hooking one while fishing in the waters of Puget Sound. Maybe you have stood on the side of a stream and marveled at the sight of wild salmon making their way upstream to spawn in the very place they began their lives years before.

Have you ever wondered what you could do to help these amazing animals in their efforts to complete their life cycle? Wonder no more, pull on some rubber boots and meet the Mid Puget Sound Salmon Enhancement Group on the river banks of one of the tributaries to Mill Creek in Auburn as we volunteer a few hour to restore its this vital salmon habitat.

It doesn’t look like much but this tributary supports juvenile salmon, providing important off-channel refuge during high stream flows. The Mid Puget Sound Salmon Enhancement Group will be planting nearly 2,000 trees and shrubs over the course of a few days and need help to do so. A few hours from Slow Food Seattle members will greatly speed this effort and assure that wild salmon are welcomed home to clean, cool water in a free flowing stream.

Mid Puget Sound Salmon Enhancement Group’s mission is to increase salmon populations to healthy and sustainable levels while working cooperatively with private landowners and others in the community to improve salmon habitat. They rely on volunteers and members to make habitat restoration a reality. Let’s help them make the project a success while being good stewards to our wild salmon populations!

Here are the details:

• When: Saturday November 6th from 10am to 2pm
• Where: Please meet at the corner of West Valley Highway and 15th Street NW. Parking is limited so car pool if possible. You will receive detailed directions once you sign up.
• What to wear: Dress appropriately to plant young trees and be prepared for the day’s weather be it rain gear or sunglasses. Work gloves and sturdy shoes a must.
• What to Bring: Mid Sound team will have warm drinks, some shovels and lots of small trees. Please bring your own shovel or basic garden tools (all clearly labeled) if they are handy. Remember to bring your our own drinking water, lunch and anything else that you need to make your day comfortable while digging in the dirt!

Sign up: Please put “Volunteer on November 6th” in the subject line when you email the Mid Sound Fisheries Enhancement Group with your name and a phone number: info@midsoundfisheries.org. All volunteers must be 18 years or older.

If you’re on Facebook, you can also find the Mid Sound Fisheries page here. A great opportunity to feel good and do your part to preserve wild salmon and essential fish habitat. Thank you!

Update on the Makah Ozette Potato Presidium

Our Presidium has been in operation for almost four years (for background, see here as well as on the Makah Ozette Potato Presidium page). The objective of having  an abundant regional seed source was realized last year by our partner, Pure Potato.

We had finally reached the long awaited three years it takes to develop the available genetic material into a field of virus free seed potato. There was an abundance of seed available for the 2010 planting throughout the region and seed was even sold to a large potato grower in California.  Pure Potato sold all of its seed this spring and most of the 7 regional nurseries who stocked the seed sold out to home gardeners by mid spring.

A highlight of 2009 was Essential Baking Company‘s (EBC) adopting the potato, contracting with Full Circle Farm and making their seasonal potato bread using the Makah Ozette Potato (MOP). The management of EBC declared this to be the most flavorful potato bread they had ever produced. They are committed to continuing to use the MOP when it is available in the future.

2010 has been a disaster year for the MOP. Flooding destroyed the entire crop of seed at Pure Potato. This is a severe setback for the Presidium as it will take another three years to regenerate the seed stock to the 2009 levels. Pure Potato having experience the success with this potato is committed to carrying on with its development. Full Circle Farm has also experienced a significant loss of crop due to flooding and will not be able to supply EBC this fall for its potato bread. Unless MOP can be sourced from California this year, we may be eating plain potato bread this fall.

If you have grown MOP this year, you can try to save some seed from your harvest. Keep them in a mesh bag in your refrigerator till spring.

Savor Bristol Bay Week in Seattle: July 4-10

Photo: Nick Hall

It’s almost summer time and with summer comes fresh wild salmon to restaurants, seafood markets and backyard BBQ’s! In the Pacific Northwest we are savvy to the fact that not all salmon taste the same. Depending on their species, what the fish were feeding on and the river run that the salmon are a part of each fish will vary slightly and have its own unique taste profile. This gives many reasons to serve a variety of sustainably caught wild salmon from the waters of Washington, Oregon and Alaska.

Slow Food Seattle is partnering with Trout Unlimited to celebrate our nation’s largest wild salmon fishery during Savor Bristol Bay Week: July 4-10.

Photo: Nick Hall

Bristol Bay’s salmon and story are coming back to the Northwest during the peak of the fishing season. Each day more chefs from our Slow Food Seattle Restaurants are saying “Yes” to featuring Bristol Bay salmon on their menus during Savor Bristol Bay Week. In the July Slow Food newsletter we’ll provide a list of places you can go to “Vote with Your Fork” for Bristol Bay.

We are planning a number of events in the Seattle area so you can be a part of the celebration. Four events are planned for the Savor Bristol Bay week:

• Tuesday, July 6 & Thursday, July 8 – Two free screenings of the award winning documentary RED GOLD at Roy Street Coffee, both showings will be at 7:30pm.
• Wednesday, July 7 – Wild Salmon cooking class and dinner with Chef Becky Selengut at Edmonds PCC, 6:30pm to 9pm. Come Savor Bristol Bay and learn new ways to prepare Bristol Bay salmon at home as well as information about Bristol Bay’s salmon fishery and the things that make it so unique. (Tickets here; RSVP details on Facebook). On the menu: Quinoa cakes with wok-smoked king salmon and herbs; Bristol Bay salmon with watercress soup, chile oil and croutons; Slow cooked sockeye salmon with Columbia Valley red wine sauce and braised fennel.

Until July brings us the opening of Bristol Bay salmon season, you can learn more about this amazing place and wild salmon fishery from Trout Unlimited’s online sources:

• WhyWild is part of Trout Unlimited’s Pacific Salmon Program with the purpose to educate and engage the salmon marketplace in Trout Unlimited’s wild salmon and steelhead conservation efforts from California through Alaska. From fish facts to what wine to serve when you “eat it to save it” you can find it all things wild salmon on this website!
• Save Bristol Bay – This Trout Unlimited website will give you an overview of Bristol Bay – the place, the people, the environment and the issues – all presented with beautiful images that inspire and move you to learn more about the incredible Bristol Bay watershed and how to preserve it for future generation of both people and animals.

  
  

  

Washington’s Wonderful Wild Chinook Dinner

On May 13, Slow Food Seattle, Ray’s Boathouse, Washington Trollers Association and Makah Tribal Nation hosted a reception and dinner  celebrating the first of the season’s Washington troll caught Chinook salmon.  The delicious and sustainable multi-course salmon dinner featured wine pairings carefully chosen by Kristen and James Michael of the Chinook Winery in Prosser, Washington. Chef Peter Birk complimented the meal with a seasonal selection of locally farmed, seasonal produce.

Chef Birk kicked off the evening with a warm welcome followed by introductory remarks from Slow Food Seattle’s Co-Chair, Lucy Norris.  The mission of Slow Food comes down to a very simple idea:  food should be good, clean and fair.  To bring this point home, guests enjoyed the evening learning and tasting how and why Washington troll caught Chinook is a fine example of good, clean and fair food.

Following the first course of grav lox, Slow Food Seattle board member and Sustainable Seafood Consultant, Amy Grondin led a discussion and Q&A with fishermen from the Makah Tribe and Washington Trollers Association. Fishing season for troll caught Chinook opened May 1st on the Washington coast.  In addition to catching salmon, fishermen are also stewards of this finned resource. We learned how fishermen are working with scientists to assure that Washington has healthy populations of wild salmon for decades to come. From habitat restoration to participating in wild salmon management with the Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife, sustainability is taken seriously by the fleet.

Physical and sensory characteristics revealed what the salmon ate and where the fish traveled through spawning.  Having fed almost exclusively on krill, the roasted Chinook had a lighter flesh and nuttier taste, while the grilled Chinook, which ate mostly very small forage fish, was a deep red hue with rich, silky fattiness.  There were other differences noted to where the fish was caught: originating from both Fraser and Columbia River tributaries.

At the end of the evening, Amy made an announcement that a deal had been negotiated with Seattle area Whole Foods Markets.  For the first time, select local markets are now carrying Washington troll caught Chinook in their stores until the end of the 2009 season.  We applaud Amy’s tireless efforts to advocate for sustainable salmon habitats as well as the fishing and coastal communities who depend on fishing for livelihoods.

A Word about the Slow Food Ark of Taste

Washington Marbled Chinook Salmon was added to the Slow Food Ark of Taste in 2006.  The Ark of Taste is an international program that seeks, first and foremost, to save an economic, social and cultural heritage of a diverse variety of animal breeds, seafood, fruit and vegetables, cured meats, cheeses, cereals, pastas, cakes and confectionery.

The mission of the Slow Food Ark of Taste is to preserve traditional tastes and to celebrate them, by introducing them to the Slow Food membership and then to the world.

All of the foods on the Ark of Taste are heritage products that have real economic viability and commercial potential for the communities that grow, produce or harvest them.