Cape Town - I met an Old Salt once from Iceland. He was a trawler’s master named Captain Jon Godmundsson. He told us about his daughter, Bjork Jonsdottir, following the Icelandic naming culture. Wherever he roamed, from the southern Atlantic to a remote Pacific atoll, he kept a picture of her in his pocket, and he would take it out to show any stranger what it was that kept him going, and what ensured his safety at sea – the prize of a warm hug when he reached his home port.
Everything about Captain Godmundsson was cold. When you shook his hand, you felt the chill he had brought with him from the northern Atlantic reaches best flown over en route from Europe to New York. Deep in his cobalt blue eyes were recesses where were stored the memories of battles won by Viking ancestors, and images of great creatures of the deep his antecedents had wrestled with their bare, rope-muscled hands. His hair was a whack of grey so luxuriant that a swashbuckling Hollywood A-lister would scalp him for it. It was the kind of hair a father bestows on a son knowing he will need it to survive the wastelands of the north.
Everything about his ship was salted. It was like being inside a large fish that had been laid down to cure. You imaged you’d find strands of giant dill draped on the decks, and lemon juice lashing down instead of rain out in the far ocean.
The pallor of his skin, brown and dry from long seasons in cold sun, helped you understand how, when Captain Godmundsson was a lad, Iceland had only two seasons, and knew no spring or autumn, because it had no need of them. Whether global warming would have much effect on his nation’s seasons remained, and remains, to be seen, but this was the late 1970s, and I was a young shipping reporter in Cape Town, and Captain Godmundsson was trying to understand what I was asking him.
It seemed he was grunting and clearing his throat more than speaking, which I put down to the empty vodka bottle on the desk in his cabin as much as to his strange language. His body, despite the rotundity that comes from vigorous eating to ward off the ocean chill, suggested a lifetime of physical activity typical of Icelanders. You wouldn’t want to find yourself locked in a bout of glima with Captain Godmundsson, that Viking brand of wrestling that has passed through his nation’s generations. The grip of his cold handshake was punishment enough.
Before I left that day to return to shore and my newspaper desk, he gave me a side of frozen salmon which he said came from the waters near his Icelandic home. He had fished it himself and kept a frozen store of it to see him through the hard months at sea. No salmon has ever tasted quite so much of the icy rivers of those distant parts. If ever a benchmark was needed, that was it.
Northern Atlantic salmon are flush with the saltiness of the sea they live in, though often they’re caught when migrating up rivers to spawn. That saltiness has everything to do with their full flavour, and that I reckon is the key difference between these fish and our tamer cousins. While I love our “salmon trout” and other pink versions, that slab of Norwegian salmon fillet, for example, once in a blue moon is worth breaking the bank for.
I was given a side of salmon the other day which was good, if not in the league described above, and I made a salmon sauce for pasta. If you can afford the imported northern Atlantic version, do.
Salmon pasta
200g salmon fillet per serving
Squeeze of lemon juice
Generous bunch of dill
Fish spines, heads etc. from the freezer
1 large onion
Glass of white wine
Cold water
Cream
Butter
Salt and pepper to taste
Squeeze lemon juice over both sides of salmon fillets, pack on plenty of fresh dill, and marinate in the fridge for a couple of hours.
Make a quick fish stock by shoving the fish discards straight from the freezer into a pot with half the onion, chopped, and lots of cold water. Reduce on a high heat but stop before it boils down too much. How much you need depends on how many people the sauce will be feeding, so you’ll need to use a bit of nous. If it seems too little, simply add more stock and wine.
Steam the fish and set aside.
Sauté the other onion half, very finely chopped, in butter until soft. Deglaze with white wine. Add more white wine and reduce to a syrup, add more wine and reduce again. Add more white wine (you decide how much, Daisy, it’s a democracy), then the reduced fish stock, more dill, season, and simmer for the flavours to develop. Add a glass or so of cream, stir and reduce again. Quantities depend on how many you’re feeding, Daisy.
Flake the fish into the sauce. Remove any dill fronds you can pin down. Squeeze lemon juice into the pot, check seasoning, and simmer for a few minutes. Toss cooked, drained pasta into the sauce, and serve with a timid grating of Parmesan. Drink a toast to a guttural Old Salt and tuck in.
Weekend Argus