It sounded like the perfect plan.
Placentia resident Marilyn Gwosdof would once again order the beautiful poached salmon platter she’d come to rely on for her Jewish holiday buffet from Hollis O’Brien of Parties by Panache. But this year, Hollis was so swamped with synagogue celebrations that she couldn’t take orders from individual customers.
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Marilyn was on her own. Or so she thought.
“Why don’t you make it yourself?” I suggested. “It can’t be that hard.”
This from someone whose entire experience poaching salmon went back 20 years, when I was testing recipes for my cookbook and had poached a salmon in the dishwasher. (And, yes, it actually works!)
“If I bought the salmon, would you make it for me?” Marilyn pleaded. How could l say no?
The Gwosdofs are legendary salmon experts, so the bar was set really high. Twice a year, for 36 years, Marilyn’s husband Peter had fished for salmon – King Salmon in the fall and spring and Coho, also called silver salmon, in the fall – in remote Yes Bay, Alaska.
Known around these parts as the “Chief Salmon Guy,” Peter had organized a group of 48 friends for these outings.
“The fish are gutted at the lodge, and we’d bring it home frozen, packed in dry ice in special cartons and sent on the plane as checked luggage,” he noted.
The biggest fish Peter ever caught was 55 pounds.
“At Yes Bay there are no boring moments,” he said. “You start hooking fish right away. The longest it took me to catch a fish was one and a half hours. These fish are large, and they pull you along. You really have to keep your thumb on the spool.”
A lot of the haul the Gwosdofs gave away. (I was one of the lucky recipients.) It was so fresh, as if it were pulled out of the water and flung onto our plates. If fish is frozen soon after capture and stored properly, it’s of higher quality and fresher than the “fresh” fish you see at the grocery.
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“For this party I wanted wild Coho,” said Marilyn. “I did not want farm-raised. I bought two frozen pieces about 2 1/2 pounds each, from the fresh fish department at Ralph’s. I had seen enough people buying that there that I thought it was turning over.”
Now the ball was in my court.
These were large pieces of fish, so I definitely knew I had to poach them in the oven. I checked lots of recipes on the internet and decided on 300 degrees. No recipe here, but I sprinkled the fish with salt and pepper, tossed some onion and carrot slices and fresh dill on the bottom of the pan, and poured in a mixture of water and wine with a splash of lemon juice.
Then I covered the top with thin lemon slices and fresh dill, covered the pan tightly and crossed my fingers. I used my instant-read thermometer and pulled it out at 130 degrees, as it does continue to cook as it cools.
The fish was delicious, if I say so myself, but I wanted to check with the real expert, so after the holidays I called Hollis at Panache. While Panache does full event planning, including servers, bar, rentals and flowers, they are happy to help you fill in with a dish for your own party table if they can.
“We try to be as accommodating as we can,” O’Brien. “We’re aware of people’s budgets. If they want to use their own centerpieces or just want the food delivered, that’s fine.”
Hollis’s salmon poaching method surprised me.
“We wet an old towel with a combination of wine or lemon juice and water – get that towel sopping wet, and completely cover the salmon. When it’s completely cool, we decorate it with a layer of dill sauce – mayonnaise, lemon juice and fresh chopped dill – then a layer of very thinly sliced cucumbers so they look like fish scales, and garnish with fresh dill and thinly sliced lemon,” she said. “The best part is the salmon can be cooked a couple days ahead of time and can be decorated a day ahead. Anything people can do ahead of time is so valuable to them.”
Fullerton’s Judy Bart Kancigor is the author of “Cooking Jewish” and “The Perfect Passover Cookbook.” Her website is cookingjewish.com.
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