For this meal, I use a jar of red Thai chili paste, which you can get at all major grocery stores, though Asian groceries have a better selection. I also use regular coconut milk. You could, I guess, use light coconut milk, but it isn’t as delicious and is more of a broth than a sauce. Fresh ginger brings a kick, fish sauce adds salt and funk, shallots give the poaching liquid depth and lime brings brightness. If you happen to have a line on lime leaves, which you can get at some Asian groceries, you could throw in a couple in lieu of zest. Thai basil is also a specialty grocery item, but you can use regular basil and do fine. I use 2 teaspoons of curry paste for mild to medium heat, but some of the elders in my family think it verges on too spicy, so adjust accordingly.

The real beauty of this dish comes when you plate the halibut up with crunchy peanuts, herbs and chili crisp. A version of chili crisp can be found on the table at Thai and Vietnamese restaurants. It’s sold in a little jar at most large grocery stores and there are many varieties at Asian groceries like Midtown New Sagaya. It’s also called “garlic chili crunch oil” or “chili crunch.” Usually, it’s made with oil, red chilis and crispy shallots, though ingredients vary and some versions include nuts or sesame seeds. It is totally worth an extra trip to have it in your pantry. I use it all the time to spice up fried eggs or smear on salmon before I grill it.

Thai-style white fish curry

Serves 4 or 5

Ingredients:

About 1 1/2 pounds halibut or cod, portioned into four to five servings, skin removed

Salt and pepper

2 large or four small shallots, minced

1 tablespoon neutral oil like avocado or canola

1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger

1 13.5-ounce can regular coconut milk

2 teaspoons red curry paste (use less if you are sensitive to spice and more if you like the heat)

1 teaspoon fish sauce

2 teaspoons brown sugar

Zest of one lime

1/4 to 1/2 cup water or chicken stock, optional

1/4 cup Thai or regular basil, julienned

Rice, enough for four servings, Thai jasmine or Calrose

For garnish:

Chopped cilantro, chopped basil, lime wedges, chopped peanuts, chili crisp

Method: Start the rice, cooking it according to package directions. Pat fish dry and season with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add shallots and saute until transparent and soft. Add ginger, saute until fragrant. Add coconut milk. Stir in curry paste until well combined, add fish sauce, brown sugar and lime zest, bring to a gentle bubble. Slide the fish into the curry. The liquid should come at least halfway up the fish portions. If it doesn’t, add water or stock and return to a gentle simmer. Cook 3 to 4 minutes and then turn the fish over, cook an additional 3 to 4 minutes or until the fish is almost cooked through, turn one more time. Remove from heat. Stir in basil. Allow to rest for 5 to 10 minutes. The fish should continue to cook. Serve with rice and extra sauce. Garnish with herbs, lime wedges, chopped peanuts and chili crisp.

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In summertime, a person like me might get invited to walk over to sit at the long table that extends into the living room for a fish dinner. It’s the sort of menu you understand if you’re from here: grilled or baked fish, rice, salad, bread and, specific to her house, always broccoli with hollandaise sauce.

It was at one of these dinners that I tasted this brilliant, addictive halibut with a lemon-wine sauce and buttery cracker crumbs. When I asked for the recipe, she led me to a spiral binder and paged to an ancient piece of notebook paper where instructions had been written cryptically in pen. It was the sort of old recipe that falls right in line with Alaska’s cooking traditions from the last 100 years because it uses wild food plus refrigerated goods that keep, and pantry staples.

“It’s marvelous!” my aunt said. “You’ll eat it the next day for breakfast!”

She’s not wrong. That’s if there’s some left over.

We should also have some real talk about halibut. If you get one, you end up with A LOT. And then you have to figure out how to eat it all. And inevitably you get tired of it and run out of recipes and ask yourself if you even like it. But now you’ve got one more halibut trick up your sleeve. Allow it to help you to get closer to the bottom of the freezer.

A few notes. Ritz crackers are essential — no other cracker is as good. Fresh lemon juice is also essential. You can also throw in some zest, if you’re a lemon enthusiast. You may, if you’d like, substitute a couple of cloves of grated garlic for the powder, but the garlic then becomes more of a main flavor player, so it’s more of a lemon-garlic cracker halibut. Try not to overcook the fish. I write this so much, I’ve considered making T-shirts. I recommend using a thermometer and pulling it from the oven at about 130 degrees. It continues to heat on the plate. But use your judgment — thinner fish cooks much faster and a big granddaddy halibut will take a little longer. Also key: Don’t put the acid into the sauce until you’ve taken it off the heat and allowed it to cool slightly.

Aunt Barbara’s lemon-cracker crumb halibut

Serves 4, generously

Ingredients:

2 cups, or two sleeves of Ritz crackers, crushed

About 2 pounds halibut, cut into four single-serving portions, patted dry

Salt and pepper

1 stick of salted butter

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

2 tablespoons flour

3 tablespoons dry white wine

Juice of one lemon (roughly 2 to 3 tablespoons)

Parsley or other chopped herbs for garnish

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Spread the cracker crumbs in an even layer on the bottom of an ungreased baking dish that can fit all the fish. Lay the halibut portions on the crackers. Season well with salt and pepper. In a saucepan over medium heat, melt butter with the garlic powder and flour, whisking constantly, until it’s well combined and just beginning to bubble. Remove from the heat and whisk in the lemon juice and wine. The sauce should thicken. Spoon the sauce over the fish and slide into the oven. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish, until it’s opaque at the center and measures 130 degrees on a thermometer. Allow to rest 7 to 10 minutes before sprinkling with garnish and serving.

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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.

This recipe was originally published in Edible Alaska.

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Baked halibut is mentioned in Alaska’s cookbooks from the early part of the 20th century, but it’s usually cooked with tomato sauce. Canned tomatoes were shelf-stable and, as far as I can tell, commonly available. They figure in lots of halibut recipes.

The earliest recipe that I could find that calls for baking fish in a cream sauce is in an undated early-century cookbook in the Anchorage Museum collection: “Cook Book,” compiled by The Friendly Aid Society of the First Presbyterian Church in Anchorage.

That recipe, contributed by Mrs. H.W. Nagley, whose husband owned the general store in Talkeetna, is written for canned tuna, and calls for a homemade white sauce covered with “buttered crumbs or grated cheese.” A person could say it’s also an early relative of tuna-noodle casserole (which appears in many Alaska cookbooks from mid-20th century on, likely also related to the shelf-stable, affordable nature of canned tuna.)

Halibut Olympia-type dishes begin to appear in lots of cookbooks after World War II. By then, refrigeration would have been widely available. Recipes collected in church cookbooks also begin to show the influence of brands, like Best Foods, which is mentioned by name in a number of early baked halibut recipes.

In the Anchorage Women’s Club cookbook “Alaska’s Cooking,” published in 1959, a cook identified as “Mrs. John C. Tower” recommends broiling halibut with mayonnaise (“must be Best Foods,” she writes), lemon and finely-chopped onion.

Halibut Olympia has all kinds of regional variations. There’s halibut Caddy Ganty from Southeast, made with wine-soaked fish, rolled in breadcrumbs, covered with mayo, sour cream and chopped onion (there’s a very fine recipe for that in “A Collection of Recipes from The Gustavus Inn,” a cookbook every Alaska cook should own). There’s halibut Alyeska, made with grated cheddar on top and sautéed onions on the bottom. There’s halibut Sitka, made with chopped green onions in the mayo spread.

Classic Halibut Olympia

Serves 4

Roughly 2 pounds halibut, cut into four to six serving-sized pieces

2 to 3 cups white wine

1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for sprinkling over fish

Zest of one half a lemon

A couple dashes Tabasco sauce (optional)

1/2 tsp Dijon mustard

One quarter large white onion, grated

Ritz crackers (roughly two per serving), crushed

Butter for the pan

At least two hours in advance, generously salt the fish, place in a large bowl, and cover with wine. About a half-hour before dinner, preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Generously butter a baking pan. Prepare the sauce, whisking together sour cream, mayonnaise, Parmesan, lemon zest, Tabasco, grated onion and mustard. Salt to taste. Remove the fish from the wine and dry well with paper towels. Place the fish in the pan, spread each piece with topping, sprinkle with cracker crumbs and Parmesan. Bake for about 15 minutes, until the center of the thickest piece is still just a little translucent and the crackers have browned. Serve right away.

Find this and other historic Alaska recipes in my book, “The Whale and the Cupcake.”

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