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Try this weeknight British-style white fish pie

Julia O'Malley — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 21:56:37 +0000

I spend lots of time reading old Alaska cookbooks and I have made many versions of pirok, or Russian-influenced salmon or halibut pie with rice, fish, eggs, and pie pastry. Recently, though, feeling springtime frozen fish pressure, I have been mixing up my fish pie game with a British-style pie. In particular, I’ve fallen in love with a most endearing and grandfatherly British celebrity chef named Rick Stein, who appears to be kind of the fish pie king of the country. In his pie videos, his hands shake a little and he seems to throw a little of this or that in on a whim. The pies are just delicious.

Traditional fish pie—like many dishes in England—is made very simply, with white fish like pollock and sometimes smoked fish like haddock, a simple cream sauce, boiled egg, and parsley. Stein has a number of pie recipes, including one topped with mashed potato and made with heavy cream that’s pretty great. I was drawn to his simple “quick fish pie” recipe from his book, Simple Suppers. Made with store-bought puff pastry on top, it’s both beautiful and fast to pull together for a dinner party. If you can’t find puff pastry, you can substitute a store-bought or homemade pie crust.

What I liked about this recipe most was the smoky, rich sauce. Stein used smoked haddock to flavor the pie and started the sauce by poaching the haddock in milk to steep in that smoky flavor. I adapted the recipe to fish that’s easy for Alaskans to get their hands on and used a very salty, smoky salmon strip instead, which worked great. You could also use regular smoked salmon or, if you have it, a little smoked black cod. Stein uses boiled eggs in his pies, which I skipped due to the pickiness of my young pie eaters, but I did add peas, because they say “fish pie” to me.

British-style fish pie

Serves 6 – 8

Ingredients:

Butter for the pan

2½ cups whole milk

½ large white onion

4 cloves

1 bay leaf

1¾ pounds white fish, like halibut or cod

3 ounces smoked salmon strips, skins cut off, or 3 ounces smoked salmon, skin removed

1 cup frozen peas

2 egg yolks

2 tablespoons cornstarch

3 ounces sharp English Cheddar, grated

⅓ cup chopped parsley

2 teaspoons white wine or vermouth

Pinch of nutmeg

Salt and pepper to taste

1 8-ounce sheet store-bought puff pastry, thawed

1 tablespoon of milk to glaze

Method:

Preheat the oven to 400° F. In a 4- to 6-quart pot, place the milk, the onion studded with the cloves, the bay leaf, white fish, and smoked salmon. Bring the milk to a bubble, turn it down to a simmer, and allow the fish to poach for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat.

Using a slotted spoon, scoop out the fish and the other solids. Discard the onion and bay leaf. Crumble the fish and arrange it inside a buttered 9-inch pie pan. Sprinkle the frozen peas on top. Set aside. Whisk the yolks and cornstarch in a small bowl. Whisking constantly, ladle some of the warm milk into the egg mixture. Then scrape that mixture back into the pan full of poaching liquid and return to medium heat.

Add wine or vermouth, allow mixture to boil gently for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. The sauce should thicken to a warm pudding texture. Add cheese, parsley, and nutmeg. Stir until cheese is melted, remove from the heat, taste, adjust salt and pepper. Pour over the fish in the pie pan. Roll out the puff pastry sheet so that it is at least an inch larger than the pan on all sides. Carefully place it on top of the pie, tuck it under the lip of the pan, press the edges with a fork, and trim excess. Prick the top a few times to let out the steam. Brush it with milk. Place the pie on a sheet pan to catch any overflow, and slide into the oven for 25 to 30 minutes, until it’s golden and puffed. Serve right away.

British-style white fish pie. (Julia O’Malley)

This recipe was originally published in Edible Alaska.

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For Eater: Alaska’s last Dairy Man bets everything on local milk

Julia O'Malley — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 03:54:00 +0000

There’s nothing easy about running a dairy in remote Alaska. To do it means growing your own grain, troubleshooting veterinary problems, fixing broken equipment yourself, and bottling and distributing your own milk. Never mind the expense of keeping cows warm when it’s minus 30, and shooing bears out of the fields.

Scott Plagerman says he likes the challenge of going it alone.

“And the reward, if it works,” he says. “Sometimes it doesn’t.”

For Eater: A guide to eating in Juneau

Julia O'Malley — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 03:49:00 +0000

To enjoy Juneau, it’s best to bring a raincoat, some XtraTuf boots, and a sense of adventure. It’s a place with some serious weather, where the ocean and mountains loom large, air travel is often unreliable, and cruise ships can double the town’s population on any given day all summer long. Here’s a guide to eating there.

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The Eater Guide to Alaska

Julia O'Malley — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 03:45:00 +0000

Food in Alaska has a certain magic to it. If it comes from nature — like blueberries, herring eggs, moose meat, or salmon — it’s connected to the vast, wild place. If it comes from elsewhere, as almost all store-bought food does, it has novelty and, often, mysterious origins. If it’s prepared following a method from a homeland thousands of miles away, it’s full of longing and nostalgia. Alaska Natives who haven’t traveled to their rural home village for a long time talk about how eating wild foods, like seal oil sent by relatives, carries a comforting reminder of who they are. I had a great time helping to edit and contributing to the 2022 Eater Guide to Alaska. Take a look.

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For Eater: A guide to Anchorage restaurants

Julia O'Malley — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 03:40:00 +0000

Every city has its distinct architectural features – in Anchorage that would be gritty big-box store parking lots with soaring mountain views, 80-year-old log cabins tucked between condo developments, and many, many strip malls. In those malls — between the UPS stores, mani-pedi spots and storefront churches — you’ll often find some of the state’s best eating. Here’s my guide to Anchorage, part of the Eater Guide to Alaska I guest edited.

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Ash Adams and her magic lens, Bok Bok edition

Julia O'Malley — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 01:58:31 +0000

I can’t believe that a year has passed since our last family photo! Over the year, we’ve added some chickens to the mix. Naturally, they are the stars of this year’s holiday shoot with our dear friend Ash Adams, who has such a great sense of humor and a way with kids. Leo named most of them after his favorite movie, Big Hero 6. They are Hiro, Bamax, Tadashi and, for reasons I can’t explain, Bubba. (That’s Bubba in our family photo. Her little comb has some frostbite on it, poor girl. I’ve since improved the coop heat situation.) Neri, who is up first in the morning and has been collecting the eggs with me, calls them “Bok Boks.” That name has kind of stuck.

Here’s their coop, which we were lucky to inherit from some neighbors who had it in their backyard but didn’t have chickens (thanks!). It’s all decorated for Christmas:

They were babies just this spring at being raised by Sara’s cousin Emily at Twitter Creek Gardens in Homer. And now, they’ve finally started laying:

Eggs, top to bottom, belong to: Bamax, Tadashi, Bubba, and Hiro.

They have been way more fun than I expected. And the fresh eggs are great. I love giving them to friends and family almost as much as I love eating them.

Anyway, thanks Ash, for these great photos:

Little Neri, age 17 mo.

There is chicken poo on my boots.

Hiro, looking glam. My mutant hand.

I let him hold the eggs. It doesn’t always end well.

Leo, age 4.

This is kind of my favorite photo.

No, maybe it’s this one.

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Guest post: 10 ways to get into the holiday spirit with kids

Julia O'Malley — Fri, 11 Dec 2015 18:58:39 +0000

By Natasha Price

I’ve got the holiday spirit. Bad. And it’s all thanks to our 3-year-old son. Seeing his little face light up at every holiday detail fills me with warmth and joy. We turned on the car radio the other morning as little Michael Jackson was belting out “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” Jack was giddy and screamed, “We sing this at preschool! I know this song!”

The magic is real and I want to be a part of it.

Here are some ways we’ve been keeping the holiday spirit alive in our Anchorage household. Share yours in the comments!

1. Portable North Pole

A friend told me about Portable North Pole, a free online program where you enter a few generic bits of information about your child, what you’d like him to work on this year (we went with “brush teeth every night”) and a photo. In a few minutes you have a personalized video message from Santa.

Our son Jack was stunned when he watched it. He made us replay it four times. Let the Christmas joy begin.

2. Get into the kitchen

Our preschooler loves to help out in the kitchen. At Thanksgiving he helped me make pumpkin pie and it was a kitchen bonding experience. He measured the flour, cracked the eggs and turned on the mixer.

Last week we made perfect potato latkes and Jack was a terrific sous chef.

Whether it’s Christmas cookies or candy cane bark, there’s plenty of ways to get your kids culinarily involved.

3. Donate to a local shelter

Each year Bean’s Cafe, a local homeless shelter, turns to the community to help out with Beanie Boxes, which are wrapped shoeboxes filled with necessities such as deodorant, toothbrushes and socks. Have your child help you fill up a shoebox with goodies, pick out the wrapping paper and ribbon and drop it off.

This year we collected items for AWAIC, the local women’s shelter. I made a list based on what they asked for and included little clip art pictures of each item to make it visual. Jack and I went to the store and he selected three items from the list to donate.

4. Felt Christmas Tree

This is a project I put together two years ago, but it’s still fun to play with. Buy a couple of yards of green felt and cut out a tree shape. On several different colors of felt draw some simple shapes and have your child cut them out to create ornaments. Pin the tree to the wall and let him decorate his tree to his heart’s content.

Click here for a more detailed tutorial.

5. Go to a holiday movie

Up till now we’ve avoided taking our son to a movie theater. I remember being a non-parent and cursing the world whenever a screaming kid was seated at our movie.

Thankfully there are kid-friendly options. We recently took Jack to Williwaw where they were showing a kid-themed Christmas film as a fundraiser for Special Olympics. It was Jack’s first movie theater experience and a positive one. The manager passed out free popcorn and families roasted marshmallows over a s’mores kit.

Williwaw has several more movie nights planned. There are two show times so you don’t have to worry about staying out past bedtime. Plus it saves you a night of having to cook dinner! Click here for show times.

If you can’t make it to Williwaw, there’s always the peanut gallery at Bear Tooth Theaterpub. Tickets are cheap and if you catch an early show you don’t have to feel bad about making noise in the balcony area.

6. Make snowflakes

Many tiny tots are hard at work on their fine motor skills. Ours loves cutting out paper. Work on making paper snowflakes together. Jack was happy with just cutting up pieces of paper and taping them to the window. We’ve got sort of an abstract impressionism vibe going on.

Here’s a simplified way to make paper snowflakes that is perfect for new scissor users.

7. Visit the Gingerbread Village

Photo Credit: gbrunett via Compfight cc

Every year the Hotel Captain Cook sets up an elaborate gingerbread house village in their lobby. Check out their live gingerbread web cam to catch a glimpse.

Afterwards, head the the store for some graham crackers, powdered sugar, gumdrops and Necco wafers and build your own.

8. Write holiday cards

I’m a big supporter of snail mail. Have your child help you with your holiday cards by including their scribbles and drawings. Jack actually drew a Christmas tree for his preschool teacher, so that definitely was included.

9. Look at the lights

Kids tend to love sparkly things that light up. Thankfully it’s dark most of the time here right now so it’s easy to find trees and houses adorned with twinkly lights. Start off at Town Square Park, which has some of the most stunning blue lighted trees.

If it’s not too cold, take a stroll through the Alaska Zoo at their evening Zoo Lights event. All the pathways are illuminated by animal-shaped light fixtures, some of which are animated. If you’re lucky you might spot a real, non-napping animal.

This week, Jack rushed inside after school to tell me his wish finally came true: the shooting star was on. A house over on Elmore and Huffman has a tall pole that lights up to the rhythm of holiday music that you tune to your car radio. Jack’s been waiting for it all year; and it’s free!

10. Have Santa mail a letter

Ok, this one is a little manipulative, but I had to give it a try. We have started a tradition in our family that in order for Santa to deliver toys to us, we have to give toys away to someone else who needs them. Instead of boring old parents telling their children to give away their toys, why not have Santa ask?

Santa mailed Jack a letter explaining that sometimes the elves fix up old toys in the workshop to give to other kids who don’t have many things. It worked like a charm. Be sure to put the correct return address.

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Before & After: Mera’s playroom makeover

Julia O'Malley — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 19:06:43 +0000

By Mera Matthews from Red House West

Okay, so this before photo was taken when the room was going through a particularly awkward/heinous phase. It wasn’t always this bad, but during the holidays last year we realized that we needed the space to function both as playroom, and as an occasional guest room when we have lots of family visiting. We cobbled it together, but the room was a chaotic, rumpled mess. Definitely not a welcoming retreat for weary travelers, nor a space to spark the imagination of a preschooler. Fast forward five months, through drywall repair, painting (a really pretty pale pink that I love!) and changing out fixtures, outlets, and switches, and here is what it looks like now:

When I think of playrooms, antique Persian rugs don’t typically jump to mind, but this rug totally makes the room. It came from my father-in-law’s childhood home, and was in our living room for a while. (As it was in our living room, it’s too big for this room and curls up on the edges, but I think that adds to the magic.) To me it looks like the secret room you would stumble into when the back of the antique wardrobe you’re hiding in gives way.

The element I’m most proud of in this room is the playhouse. It is a simple piece of plywood, with a caster on the bottom, attached to the wall with a piano hinge (I’ll be sharing details on how we made it soon).

It’s painted with chalkboard paint and folds flat against the wall, or can be pulled out so that Opal can play store or house, or do puppet shows, or whatever she can think of. Turns out a lot of imaginary scenarios are made better and more fun by the addition of a window.

The daybed is from Land of Nod, and is really really useful in this room. Having a bed for guests was non-negotiable, but it’s also nice to have a cozy perch for reading together, and it makes for comfortable theater seating for the audience at puppet shows.

Behind the daybed hangs a thrifted miniature painting. It’s tiny, only 3×4, but the details knock me out, and the colors are just right.

The curtains are lovely, light, and informal. I’ve never had a room with matching drapes of any kind, and I suddenly feel like I get it — they really do tie the room together.

Katie helped me hang the wallpaper during her last visit to Alaska (you can read our tips for wallpapering success here), and I’m still completely in love with it. It packs a graphic punch, but doesn’t overwhelm the room, and is a great backdrop for Opal’s storytelling performances, which lately usually begin with “back in the olden days . . .”

I’ve had the string lights for a while, and I love them. I like the look of bare bulb fixtures, but they’re generally too harsh for my eyes. Not these babies. I have them on a dimmer, and they give off a warm and lovely glow.

I’m really happy with this room now! We all spend more time in here, and Opal is often engaged in deep, imaginative play, rather than digging through rubble and rubbish. I love that the room is clearly a playroom, but isn’t overwhelmed by toys or loud colors or designs, and that Opal’s creativity is the star of the show.

Thanks for reading along, and in case you’re curious, here are sources:

Daybed, Land of Nod; Mattress Cover, Etsy; Curtains, (print no longer available, but same style) Urban Outfitters; Mural Wallpaper, Anthropologie; Buffalo Check Pillows, Ikea; String Lights, onefortythree; Wall Paint, Peach Fade by Behr.

Mera is a lifelong Alaskan with a passion for decorating and design. Together with her pal Katie she writes Red House West, a blog about creating stylish, personality-filled homes in cities perhaps not best known as epicenters of design. Check out Red House West for tales of DIY victory and woe, hotshot thrifting tips, and musings on style and decor.

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Guest City Notebook: Jack’s Lot

Julia O'Malley — Mon, 05 Oct 2015 18:10:00 +0000

By Kirsten Swann

Go west on Commercial Drive, past the car wash and the smoke shop, and you’ll see an unpaved lot that stands out from the rest.

There’s a picnic table out front, a little white house in the back and a few old campers parked around the yard. One sign advertises a 24/7 window repair business; another promises “Yup’ik gold & silver.” A giant coffee cup rests on a massive spinning saucer by the driveway. A partially rebuilt ’68 Dodge Charger sits next to a stack of tires nearby.

The lot – and everything on it – is Jack Vinson’s best hope.

Three summers ago, his 12-year-old son was struck by a car while riding his bike along Patterson Street. Vinson still keeps a laminated copy of the Anchorage Daily News report about the crash: It barely made 100 words, but it changed their lives forever.

The collision paralyzed Vinson’s son from the chest down. He spent his 13th birthday in a coma. The medical bills topped $1 million, and there wasn’t nearly enough insurance money.

Vinson, living with his own disability, began scrambling for ways to make money, he says. He rents the lot on Commercial Drive in the hopes of opening a business.

He tried a 24-hour coffee cart, a drive-in theater and a secondhand store. Nothing ever took off, so Vinson sells odds and ends and keeps looking for an idea that sticks. Maybe there’s room for a food truck on the lot, he says. Maybe he can sell one of the campers to bring in a little more cash.

“Everything here is to make money for my son,” he said. “All this is just to keep us going. Everything is for sale.”

This micro-story originally appeared on Mountain View Post.

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A James Beard New York City trip diary

Julia O'Malley — Mon, 04 May 2015 23:25:21 +0000

Well dear friends, what a thrill! I spent part of last week in New York City, where I attended the dinner for the James Beard Foundation Book, Broadcast and Journalism Awards (This story was nominated). It took a massive logistical childcare effort AND a makes-me-cry-it-was-so-amazing community airplane ticket fundraising campaign (THANK YOU EVERYBODY WHO DONATED OMG!), but I got there. Here I am with my friend Meg in a new dress, on the (very short) red carpet: It was pretty amazing. Look, my once-every-three-years manicure: I spent the evening in a giant room full of food people. Here’s my Eater.com editor Helen Rosner. She’s a talent. And, more important, she has supernatural selfie-taking skills. (I, on the other hand, look insane.) And, here’s Martha Stewart. You can’t see it in this picture but she’s wearing black-sequin pants. I wanted to talk to her but in the end, this is how close I got. Still, I’m satisfied. So, I did not win a James Beard Award. It went to the India Issue of Saveur. (Which Helen was also involved with editing). But, I did get to eat a delicious meal. Check it: And I had wonderful time and met lots of interesting people, who all wanted to know everything about Alaska. I told them all to go to Homer. Here are some highlights … I met Molly Wizenberg (who won a James Beard), the blogger behind the cool Seattle-based food blog Orangette. And, I had a totally hipster, sweet pea Moscow mule, prepared by a handsome bartender with a lumberjack beard at the after-party in a warehouse space. It felt very cool. (I lasted about 45 minutes and then I slipped out the door, traded my heels for some Birkenstocks and headed home, where I fell into a coma-like sleep. #old) I visited with an editor at Buzzfeed. (Look, inside Buzzfeed!) And NewYorker.com, which is located in the crazy-tall Freedom Tower. Here is the view from the 35th Floor. I also made a quick stop to say hello to a friend at the New York Times. I love the New York Times. And, I walked around until I got blisters on my feet, a tradition. Look! The Flatiron Building! And, a secret courtyard in the West Village. And this, a gorgeous blooming tree. And, a guy sitting on a bucket, playing a grand piano in the middle of Washington Square Park. Because springtime. I am so grateful to get to make such an epic trip. Thanks to everybody! Tommy watched the boys for two overnights because Sara had a business trip too. I brought him a Panama hat. And, because you read all the way to the end of the post, a bonus! That’s Julia Child’s head my face is in! (And that is Mr. James Beard.)

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