Steelhead

If you’ve read any of the Seattle food blogs or have been to Seattle or even seen advertising for Seattle, at some point you seen or read about Pike Place Market.  I’m at The Market at least once a week, often more.  I nearly always buy my fish at Pike Place Fish – you may know them as the "flying fish guys".  Or, if you’ve taken part in a business seminar that stresses making work fun for your employees and treating customers they way they would like to be treated, you’ve probably been to a seminar spawned (get it?!?) by this successful business. 

Anyway, I like this fish stall both because I think they have great fish and because the guys who work there are great.  Over time I’ve gotten to know many of them (and they have a lot of long-term employees, which you might not expect) and can always count on them to let me know what’s especially good at any given time. 

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for salmon and was hoping for fresh.  Yes!  I spied the fresh, wild King… and then spied the $25/lb price.  :-(  Yikes! That was a little more (okay a lot more) than I was hoping to spend.  One of the guys noticed me coming to an abrupt halt as I was approaching the salmon and asked what I was looking for that day.  I mentioned my dismay at the salmon price and he pointed out the fresh, local Steelhead they had in stock.  At $9/lb it was much more to my liking!  I bought a pound and headed home. 

As I was driving home I was trying to remember the last time I had steelhead – I couldn’t remember! This amazed me.  Growing up in Oregon, steelhead and rainbow trout were commonly caught by all of us amateur fisherpeople.  If you’re not familiar with steelhead, it’s sometimes called salmon-trout.  It’s in the same family as both, and looks a lot like a salmon (they are large fish).   Trout live only in freshwater; salmon are spawned in fresh water, then travel to the ocean where they live.  They return to freshwater to spawn and die. Steelhead live part of their lives in freshwater and part in saltwater. Unlike salmon which only spawn once, steelhead can repeat the spawn/migrate pattern 2 or 3 times.  I believe that in some areas they only migrate from the spawning beds in streams to lakes, instead of all the way to the ocean – mostly because dams now block their progress.  Steelhead flesh is very light pink and is milder than salmon, it’s pinker than rainbow trout.  So that was probably more than you wanted to know but there it is! :-)

So I prepared it very simply – much as I would have done if I had caught it myself.  Cut it into 6 oz pieces, squeezed a little lemon juice over the top of it, placed a very small pat of butter on each piece, added a little freshly-ground pepper, and then baked it at 500° F for about 10 minutes.  It was melt-in-your-mouth, buttery-goodness! 

I was so happy with it I returned for more this weekend.