The topic brought me to a remembrance of the commercial salmon fishing at Bristol Bay which, ironically enough, ends in about a week or so.
Short story:
When the first catch comes in at the processing plant in Ekuk, it is a tradition that some of it is served at dinner for whomever attends. Naturally, the nearly 1,500 seasonal workers will hit the buffets but in addition to that, the boats that just off-loaded will remain docked so their crews can enjoy the first catch also.
It was my first and only season in Ekuk and as the Exec Chef, it was my responsibility to quickly shift gears from the planned meal to include the first catch which was announced only a couple of hours before chow time.
The plant Supervisor, normally a no nonsense type of fellow, decided it was time to play a prank on this somewhat ignorant gentleman, (me) so when I started to cut the fresh salmon into steaks, the onlooking super told me that the salmon all had to be skinned before it could be baked becasue most of the crew didn’t like the skins.
No problem, says I, and then I made a small slit at the tail of a salmon that was on my board, held onto a small portion of the tail skin with my left hand and with my right, I skinned it with one swoop of my hand between the skin and meat. Tail to head, clean skin.
He had obviously never seen anyone do it that way before because he invited a couple of the boat captains who were lounging in the mess haul to watch me skin another, and another.
Note: Salmon is probably the only fish that can be skinned that way.
The end of the story is that the Supervisor just wanted to see me panic by telling me that I had to feed nearly 2000 hungry people skinned salmon. In truth, they were used to baked skin-on salmon so on that day, even a few locals learned a new trick.
