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The main trick is trying not to overcook the cauliflower. Depending on the size of your florets, this might require a little trial and error. I think it’s better to err on the underdone side. I also recommend doubling this recipe if you plan to serve it as a side with a meal. I love Frank’s RedHot, but some in the family are sensitive about heat. In this case, I’ve reduced the hot sauce-to-butter ratio for a milder version and recommended a healthy serving of cooling ranch. If you’re good with an air fryer, this recipe would be easy to adapt.

Buffalo Cauliflower

Makes four snack-sized servings

1 large head cauliflower, cut into florets

1/2 cup white flour

1 cup water

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoons garlic salt

1/2 cup Frank’s or other Buffalo-style hot sauce

3 tablespoons melted butter

Ranch or blue cheese dressing (Here’s my go-to homemade ranch recipe)

Celery and carrot sticks to garnish

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper. In a bowl large enough to hold the cauliflower, whisk together the flour, water, paprika and garlic salt. Toss the cauliflower in the batter and place the pieces on the sheet pan, giving each plenty of room. Bake for 15 minutes. While those are roasting, make the sauce by combining hot sauce and melted butter in a medium bowl. After 15 minutes, the cauliflower pieces should be softened but still a little toothsome and the batter should be dry and set. Remove them from the pan and toss them gently in the sauce. Discard the parchment on the pan and replace it with a fresh piece. Pull each of the florets out of the sauce and place it back on the pan. Roast for another 5 to 8 minutes, until the sauce is set and bubbling around the edges. Serve immediately with dressing and carrot and celery sticks.

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Because you cut the meat into chunks before cooking, it tends to braise a little faster than a regular pot roast. You can do this recipe in a slow cooker, transferring it from the pot to the cooker and going for 6 hours on high. The only trick, really, is getting the right gochujang. I like the kind made by O’Food that comes in a box with a gold lid, which you can for sure get at Sagaya and New Central Market. Whatever you get, make sure you don’t get the kind that says “spicy,” “medium hot” or “very hot.” Those might be good, if you like a kick, but won’t give you the warm, savory sweetness that comes with regular gochujang and makes this recipe totally fine for diners at your table who don’t like spicy food.

It’s also basically essential to serve this roast with kimchi, which adds a lovely acidic punch that perfectly complements the sweet, soft, braised beef. I also like to serve with fluffy white rice. If you’re not a kimchi person, go for pickled Korean vegetables, called banchan, that you can buy deli-style at New Central Market or order from most Korean restaurants. I like to do both.

Gochujang Pot Roast

Ingredients:

1 approximately 5-pound chuck roast, cut into six chunks

1 tablespoon neutral oil

1 shallot, sliced

1 yellow onion, sliced

4 large cloves of garlic, grated

1 1/2 tablespoons ginger, grated

2 1/2 tablespoons gochujang paste — the regular, not the “spicy” variety

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup soy sauce

2 cups beef stock

Chopped scallions, cilantro, warm rice and kimchi to serve.

Method: Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. In a large Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Brown the meat on all sides, working in batches if necessary. Remove the browned meat from the pan and set aside. Turn the heat down to medium, add the shallot and onion, and saute until soft, about five minutes. Add grated garlic, ginger, gochujang, fry for a minute or two. Add brown sugar, soy sauce and beef stock. Return the meat to the pot, put the lid on and place in the oven. Cook for two hours, flipping the meat over halfway through. Once the meat is tender, remove it from the liquid. Skim the fat from the liquid and then put the pan over medium heat to simmer and reduce for about 10 minutes. Serve with warm short-grain white rice and kimchi, and garnish with thin-sliced scallions and cilantro.

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Alaskans were disproportionately reliant on canned fruit, and canned pineapple was one of the first fruits widely available here. Pineapple cakes can be found in Alaska’s community and church cookbooks going back almost 100 years. Flash forward to the 1970s, when cake-mix cakes had totally taken over cookbooks, and “poke cakes” became a common thing. These were sheet cakes, pierced with holes, soaked in Jell-O, pudding or condensed milk and loaded with toppings, including Cool Whip and crumbled candy bars. This led to a bunch of very indulgent cakes jokingly named “Better Than Sex” or “BTS” cakes. Some were named more specifically for hunky actors like Robert Redford and Tom Selleck, who played a charming, mustachioed private investigator on the show “Magnum, P.I.,” set in Oahu. I picked this cake to adapt because it combined both our long tradition of pineapple cakes and the 1970s cake mix craze. And it involves maraschino cherries, which I get nostalgic about because I grew up eating them in canned fruit cocktail, also a longtime Alaska staple.

This recipe is written for a regular coconut cake mix, but I like the Dolly Parton mix the best — it calls for more eggs and butter instead of oil. Use it if you can find it! It’s usually at Walmart. I toned down this recipe a bit, removing a layer of instant vanilla pudding that some versions call for. I also used condensed coconut milk instead of condensed milk, which has a deeper flavor, and I reduced the sugar. I thought about Tom Selleck’s mustache the whole time.

Better Than Tom Selleck Cake

Ingredients:

1 package coconut cake mix

3 eggs

1/2 cup oil

1 cup water

1 14-ounce can condensed coconut milk, divided

1 20-ounce can crushed pineapple

2 cups heavy whipping cream

1 cup shredded coconut

Maraschino cherries for serving, optional

Instructions: Preheat the oven to 350. Grease a 13-by-9-inch pan with cooking spray. Prepare cake mix, blending it with eggs, oil and water. Pour into the pan and bake according to package directions. Meanwhile, drain crushed pineapple well, reserving its juice. Whisk together the pineapple juice and half the condensed coconut milk. When the cake is done, but still hot, poke it all over with a fork and pour the pineapple/condensed milk mixture over it, allowing it to absorb. While the cake is cooling to room temperature, whip the cream and other half of the condensed coconut milk until spreadable. Fold in the pineapple solids. Spread the cooled cake with the whipped cream-pineapple topping. Sprinkle with the shredded coconut. Refrigerate for an hour before serving. If desired, decorate each piece with a cherry.

(This recipe was adapted from “Let them Eat: Cold War Anxieties, Cake Mix, and Alaska Women’s Inner Lives,” a recipe zine produced by the Anchorage Museum.)

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Here’s how the story begins:

In October, as planeloads of evacuees from Alaska villages leveled by Typhoon Halong touched down in Anchorage, Tim Ackerman set about organizing a tribal hunting party.

They gathered their rifles and left out of the town of Haines on Alaska’s southeast panhandle, driving north along the rocky shore, scouting for sleek, dark heads breaking the smooth surface of the water.

The evacuees, the hunters knew, would soon be craving seal.

The storm hit a Yupik region 700 miles west on the Bering Sea coast, and even though Mr. Ackerman is Tlingit, he knew that Alaska Natives most everywhere took comfort in the taste of golden seal oil, rich in omega-3s and considered a medicinal soul food. It didn’t take long for him to shoot a 150-pound harbor seal, he said. The group paddled out by canoe, hooked it and hauled it in.

“Came into town, cleaned it up, wrapped it in two layers of Visqueen and tied it all shut, put some handles on it and took it out to the airport, weighed it in, and it was ready to ship,” Mr. Ackerman said.

The seal traveled by small plane to Juneau and then on an Alaska Airlines jet to Anchorage, where it was butchered and portioned for individual meals. The meals rode to a giant freezer at the Alaska Native Heritage Center, an organization at the center of an unprecedented wild food distribution effort to help more than 600 evacuees, mostly sheltered in Anchorage hotels, maintain their traditional diets as they await word on when, if ever, they can return home.

“Holed up in a hotel room and not able to go out and practice your subsistence, you’re basically separated from what you knew,” Mr. Ackerman said.

Read the rest here.

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Listen here.

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A very Alaska-feeling cousin of classic holiday beef Wellington, our salmon Wellington is a little lighter and brighter, but just as gorgeous and festive. It’s perfect for the center of a holiday table, especially if there are pescatarians coming for dinner.

The coolest thing about this recipe: It’s pretty simple and easy. Our frozen salmon is portioned already, so we made two smaller Wellingtons, but this recipe works just fine with one fat fillet. We painted the fish with Dijon and butter and then layered it in pastry with a rich, savory mixture of cream cheese, spinach and lemon zest. A little brush of egg yolk made it extra golden.

Because it’s so rich, the per-person portion is a little smaller than you might serve if you were grilling salmon. One hack for saving time on defrosting the pastry is to look for fresh pastry dough in the refrigerated section, which is sometimes available during the holidays. I found mine at Walmart. Instead of Tabasco, you might also try Barnacle’s Bullwhip Hot Sauce.

Salmon Wellington

Serves 6-8

Ingredients:

About 24 to 28 ounces filleted salmon, skin and bones removed

1 1/2 tablespoons very soft + 1 tablespoon room temperature salted butter

1 1/2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

2 cracks black pepper

1 small white onion, finely chopped, no more than 1 1/4 cups

2 cloves finely chopped garlic

1 1/2 cups cups frozen spinach, thawed

1 cup cream cheese, softened

Zest of one lemon

Two dashes of Tabasco sauce

1 13-ounce sheet puff pastry; if frozen, it should be fully thawed

One egg yolk, beaten

Method: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. In a small bowl, combine the soft butter, mustard, salt and pepper, stirring until combined. Set aside. In a frying pan over medium heat, melt the rest of the butter and saute the onion until it begins to soften. Add garlic and saute until the onion is transparent and very soft. Turn off the heat, stir in spinach, cream cheese, zest and Tabasco until well combined. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool. Prep the pastry. Lay the pastry sheet on a lightly floured piece of parchment paper or a silpat and roll it out so it’s about a quarter-inch thick. If you are using a full fillet, you will want to work with the whole or most of the piece.

If you are using two pieces of salmon, you’ll want to cut the pastry into two rectangles. To assemble Wellington, if you are using two pieces of fish, spread 1/3 to 1/2 cup of spinach mixture in the center of the rectangle of pastry, shaping it roughly to match the contours of your fish. Use more if you are doing a full fillet. Paint one side of the fish with the Dijon mixture and then lay it Dijon side down atop the spinach layer. Now paint the other side of the fish with Dijon mixture and cover with 1/3 cup layer of the spinach mixture.

Wrap the fish in the pastry dough the way you might wrap a burrito, folding in the narrower top and the bottom and then wrapping the sides into the center. Pinch the edges together and then carefully flip the pastry-wrapped fish over so that the seam is down. Crimp the edges, if desired, and decorate with a fish scale pattern, gently pressing the edge of a measuring spoon into the dough. Repeat with a second piece of salmon, if you are using two pieces. Bake for 30 minutes, until the pastry is puffed and browned. Allow to cool for 10 minutes before slicing.

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That vintage feel inspired this canned tart cherry pie, which I’ve flavored as my grandmother and mother did, using cherry kirsch or kirschwasser, an old-timey liquor of German origin. If you don’t mess with alcohol, a quarter teaspoon of almond extract will also be just fine. Or you can use both for a little more complex flavor. I also use one of my favorite crust recipes, which replaces the water with ice-cold vodka. The alcohol evaporates totally, leading to a loftier pastry. One last tip: be careful with the cherries. The goal is to fold them into the gel at the end and leave them mostly whole. They are very delicate. I change up my crust design every time, using a pizza cutter and ruler to cut the dough if I want to weave it into a lattice. If you want inspiration for that, let the internet be your guide.

Vintage tart cherry pie

Makes one 9-inch pie

For the crust:

1 cup (two sticks) salted cold butter

2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, divided

3 tablespoons sugar, divided.

3 to 4 tablespoons ice-cold vodka

For the filling:

3 14.5-ounce cans tart cherries in water

1 cup granulated sugar

Juice of one half a lemon, about 1.5 tablespoons

1 tablespoon cherry kirsch (you can also sub or add in 1/4 teaspoon almond extract)

1/3 cup cornstarch

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

2 tablespoons salted butter

One egg, beaten

Sugar for sprinkling over the top

Method:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Make the crusts one at the time. Using a food processor, process one stick of butter with one cup of flour, 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar until it forms a meal. With the blade running, drizzle cold vodka in until it just begins to coalesce into a ball. Pull it out of the bowl of the food processor, press into a disc, wrap it in parchment and put it in the fridge. Repeat. If you refrigerate the pie dough for more than 15 or 20 minutes, you’ll need to let it soften up a little on the counter before you roll it.

Next, make the filling. Drain the cherries, reserving the liquid. Place 1/2 cup of that liquid in a separate, lidded jar. In a sauce pan, combine the remaining liquid, sugar, cinnamon and kirsch or extract over medium heat, bring it to a boil and stir until the sugar dissolves and it begins to simmer. Meanwhile, add the cornstarch to the jar of juice, cover and shake well. Pour the cornstarch slurry into the boiling mixture, turn down the heat and and whisk until the mixture begins to thicken. Remove from heat, fold in the cherries and add lemon. Stir in the butter until it melts. Let it cool to room temperature while you roll out the pie dough. Warm filling will really mess with a lattice crust, in particular.

Ready a 9-inch pie pan. With a floured rolling pin, roll out one disc of dough several inches larger than the diameter of the pan and gently lift and press it in place. Fill it with the cherry filling. Roll the second disc to roughly the same size. If you choose to make a lattice top, I recommend searching for a video. I sort of like to freehand it, but for a tidier look, build the crust on parchment and lift it onto the pie. Pinch the edges all the way around and crimp them. Brush the pie with beaten egg. Place on a sheet pan to catch any extra filling and bake for 20 minutes, before turning 180 degrees, and, if it’s getting too brown, tenting it gently with foil. Bake for another 20 minutes, or until you can see the cherry filling bubbling around the edges. Allow to cool completely before cutting.

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We will meet, write freely together and give feedback via zoom for six 55-minute sessions, beginning at 6 a.m., January 9 to February 13. The workshop is open to 12 participants. This class has no homework and we are creating all new material, so it isn’t a place to work on projects already in progress, but instead a generative exercise in finding the seeds for new work. The cost is $225 per person. ($25 off for Yukon Island writers). You must have a working computer and internet connection. Bedhead welcome. Coffee recommended.

To sign up or ask questions, email me.

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Here’s how that story starts: “At a shelter in downtown Anchorage on Saturday, Arthur Lake, 74, was still dealing with the shock of his new surroundings. Cars buzzed along one of the city’s main thoroughfares with loud mufflers and booming stereos.

Mr. Lake and his family recently evacuated from Kwigillingok, a tiny Alaska Native village along the Bering Sea nearly 500 miles away. There, homes and businesses on the soft, grassy tundra were connected by boardwalks, and men had been out hunting bearded seals and other marine mammals to get ready for the winter.

“That’s where we belong,” Mr. Lake said. He has been to Anchorage many times. But, he said, ‘it’s not home.'”

Read the rest.

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