My post-Thanksgiving vibe in the kitchen is festive-meets-exhausted. I’m primed for all the sights, scents, and flavors that come with the end of the year, but looking for culinary shortcuts.
And one of my favorite culinary reprieves is cooking with cedar planks. The fragrance and flourish of cedar gives me that gathering-around-the-hearth feel that I crave, and the planks are so easy to cook with that they’re one of my go-to tools for everything from casual weeknights to special occasion dinners. Think fuss-free, low maintenance meals that are dialed up enough for people with high standards. The steam rising from the wood infuses fish and shellfish with subtle smoky flavors, gently cooking your seafood to tender, moist perfection every time.
Consider spot prawns, for example: I’ve grilled peeled spot prawns on cedar, dressed with extra-virgin olive oil and a little salt so that their buttery flavor comes through with no distractions. I have also jazzed them up with a cajun spice blend that was buried in the back of my pantry, a zesty complement to spot prawns’ inherent sweetness. Both ways, they’re an irresistibly poppable bite to enjoy at a cookout as an appetizer, since they’re done in 5 or 6 minutes.
Speaking of grilling, some of you may find joy in bundling up to cook over an open flame during the colder months of the year. But in Homer, it’s too frigid for me to venture outside to cook. The next best thing? Baking with cedar planks. Without the presence of fire, the aromas of the wood are muted, but you’ll still get all the other culinary benefits of cooking on cedar: ease, moisture and wow factor. You’ll just have to prep the planks differently. Here’s how.
Whether you’re grilling or baking, let me give you a couple recipes to try out. Beginner chefs will shine like pros when making Cedar Plank Halibut with Creamed Leeks. With this approach, I promise that you’ll never end up overcooking a fillet of Pacific halibut ever again — as I confess I used to do when I first began learning how to cook with this deliciously lean and meaty species.
If you can get your hands on a ripe pomegranate this season, I highly recommend that you bejewel a fillet of Cedar Plank Salmon at some point while the seeds of this sweet and tart fruit are at their juiciest. The crunchy burst of pomegranate seeds against a backdrop of flaky salmon is a playful and delicious contrast of texture.
We recently offered cedar planks to our members, but if you didn’t get a chance to snag one, you can find cedar planks at your local kitchen goods outpost. No cedar plank? No problem. All of the recipe ideas I’ve shared with you today can be done without a plank, on the grill or on your favorite baking sheet. Just keep a closer eye on doneness, since you won’t have the steam as a buffer for overcooking.
Before I sign off today, I want to return to a final festive-but-exhausted thought and encourage you to cross a few things off your holiday shopping list by sending the gift of healthy, delicious, sustainably-caught seafood to your loved ones.
You can arrange for these gifts to be delivered anytime this month — or even into the new year, if you know folks who’ll appreciate your help in keeping them on top of their resolutions. Just log into your Wild Alaskan account to set up your gifts, then curl up by the fireplace and ease into the season.
Live Wild,
Monica
Pictured above: A pair of cedar planks emblazoned with the Wild Alaskan Company logo, presenting sockeye fillets glazed in pomegranate molasses, bejeweled with the seeds of the fruit.
