Blackberries and Salmon Caviar

Last weekend we took Sebastian to Washington for a visit with Stephen's family. My mother-in-law has a beautiful little cabin on a bluff overlooking Puget Sound. Sebastian had a blast playing with his cousins and picking up stones on the beach—but his favorite activity was picking and eating the blackberries that grow near her house. His face, hands and clothes were stained with blackberry juice and he couldn't have been happier.

On Saturday afternoon, Stephen and his brother Greg drove down to the marina and bought fresh salmon from a Native American fisherman. They brought the fish up to the house so that Sebastian could see it. When Stephen laid it on the lawn, Sebastian touched it with his fingers and then put his hand in his mouth. Then they took the fish to the beach near the cabin to scale and gut it. When they came back, I filleted it while Kathy, his brother's wife, and I chatted. Sebastian, his grandma and cousin went out to pick yet more berries.

Greg and Stephen had saved the roe sacks and we started talking about caviar and wondering how it's made. After a quick check online, Stephen and his niece started painstakingly cleaning the eggs. Once cleaned, we soaked the roe in salt water for a short time, and amazingly we had fresh salmon caviar. (I over-salted them in the initial soak but we were able to pull a lot of the salt out simply by soaking them again in plain water.)

That evening Kathy and I threw together a salad, cooked up a wild rice blend and grilled the salmon. Stephen's sister set out some sourdough bread that she bought at a bakery in town and we opened a bottle of a white wine. The meal ended with a homemade blackberry cobbler. It seemed like the only thing that was missing was a Bon Appetit photographer.

The day was idyllic and seemed too good to be true. It reminded me of all that food can be and do: It's fun. It's interesting. It teaches us. It brings us together. Certainly every meal can't be what that one was—but we should all make sure that every now and then one is.