Around the beginning of the summer Gary had the amazing opportunity to go on a guy’s fishing trip to Alaska! 5 days of King and Coho salmon, and halibut fishing, coupled with great wine, fun fellowship and guy time. Needless to say he loved it! And, lucky for me, he came home with two 50 pound boxes of his fresh caught, cleaned and flash frozen fish.

We broke into the boxes the other day, which thankfully had been happy stored in the giant freezers at our friend, Chef Andrew’s kitchen (I was quite nervous before he got home trying to figure out how in the world I was going to store 100 pounds of fish!!) and had two goals for the day – smoking some of it and grilling some. More on the smoking shortly…but first the gorgeous grilled King salmon.

The group was only allowed to catch and keep 1 King a day as this one is the most prized on the salmon in the region. Sweet and succulent, delicious simply on its own eaten as sushi, or quickly grilled, as we did on Sunday night. We do cook a lot of salmon, but as I had just returned from France, knew we were going to sip a nice Rose from Provence so I opted to create a little Herbs de Provence dusted flavor with dried thyme, dried lavender flowers and sweetened just slightly with honey. Delicious! In fact, we did the same recipe three nights later….this may be our new go to! Serve on top of a fresh green salad or with some couscous filled with fresh parsley, thyme and dill.

Recipe:

Lavender, Honey and Thyme Grilled King Salmon
Ingredients:
Two 4-6 ounce filets of King Salmon, make sure to pick out any pin bones as Kings can have many; keep the skin on
2-3 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons each dried thyme, lavender flowers and lemon zest
Salt and pepper
Juice of 1 lemon

Preparation:
Rinse and clean the salmon, removing any pin bones. Pat dry then season generously with salt and pepper.
Drizzle 1-1 1/2 tablespoons of honey on each filet then top about 1 tablespoon of honey followed by 1/2 teaspoon each of the lemon zest, lavender and thyme. Squeeze 1/2 lemon on each filet and let rest for about 5-8 minutes as you pre-heat the grill. Heat the grill to about medium heat. Lay the filets on the grill skin side down on the side of the grill, not over direct heat, and grill for 5 minutes then flip and grill flesh side down for another 4 minutes (I don’t like my salmon to be cooked through and this still keeps it slightly medium rare inside, adjust the time if you like your salmon more well done.)  Remove from grill and serve.  The skin may start to come off, which is fine you can either remove before serving but it should be crunchy if you like the flavor of salmon skin, this one with smoky and sweet flavor.