A locally grown fall feast amongst friends-- curried carrot soup, kale, and salmon

I have this group of friends that meets a few times a year where we gather in one home and spend the evening cooking, dining, hanging out, and catching up.  With everyone's busy lives, it usually takes us a few weeks to find an evening that works for everyone.

For at least a year or two, we were on an eggplant kick where we would pick a different cuisine and build a meal around some sort of eggplant dish-- grilled eggplant, baba ganoush, moussaka, eggplant in black bean sauce, and even an African dish of some kind... I don't even remember some of the other ones.  It's amazing how versatile eggplant is!  But then *one of us* decided that she didn't really like eggplant that much, so now we pick a different theme for each meal.  For our latest feast, we decided to focus on locally grown food, so we had curried carrot soup, wild Alaskan salmon, and sautéed kale.

While Johnny, Kelly, and I were busy in the kitchen, Jenny and Brent entertained the kiddos.

While Alaska is famous for its salmon and ginormous pumpkins, I don't think that people Outside realize what amazing carrots are grown under the Alaskan midnight sun.  With our short, intense growing season, we've got these delicious sweet carrots.  I always make sure to stock up on at least 20 pounds of Spinach Creek Farm's carrots just before the close of the farmer's market-- around the middle of September.   They actually stay surprisingly crispy in the fridge for months, but sadly, my stash is already almost gone.

Kale is quite hardy, so it grows well here since our growing season is quite short and we can get hard freezes as early as August.  In fact, when I has harvesting kale for this dish, I found pellets of ice on some of the kale and the temperature hadn't reached above freezing in a few days.
 
Curried Carrot Soup

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 large onion
big bunch of carrots
~ 1 heaping tbsp of curry powder
salt and pepper
1 can of coconut milk

Directions

Chop the onion, it's OK if it's coarsely chopped since the soup will be pureed later.

Heat a a bit of olive oil in the bottom of a pot and had the onion.

Once the onions are soft, add the curry powder.

Johnny adds some fresh ground pepper to the pot.

Chop the carrots into smallish-sized chunks and add to the pot.

Kelly adds some water to the pot (or broth also works well).

Simmer the carrots until they are tenders.

 

Using an immersion blender, purée the soup.

 

Add the can of coconut milk.

 

 Stir in the coconut milk and serve.

Kelly's Decadent Salmon

Ingredients

wild Alaskan salmon

Marinade
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 dry vermouth
1 tbsp lime juice
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp parsley
thyme
ground pepper

Butter
1 stick of butter
1 tbsp lime juice
2 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp minced fresh ginger
1 tsp lime zest


Directions

Johnny fillets the salmon.

Kelly mixed up the ingredients in the marinade.

Kelly pours the marinade over the salmon.

Covered with aluminum foil, bake at 400° F until done (~15 minutes or so).

Once the salmon is cooked, spread the butter mixture over the top of it and let it infuse it.

Sautéed Kale

Ingredients
~ 1 tbsp of olive oil
3-4 cloves of garlic
~ 1 tsp of sesame oil
~ 1 tbsp of soy sauce
handfuls of kale

Directions

Over a medium high heat, add the oil.  Once it's hot, add the garlic.

Brown the garlic until it's slightly crispy.

Add in a few handfuls of kale.  It will cook down quite a bit.

Once the kale is beginning to wilt and turns a shinier green, drizzle the sesame oil and soy sauce.  Stir in before serving.

Finally all the components of the meal are ready to go-- the soup, the salmon, and kale... plus Jenny & Brent brought a saffron rice dish to serve with the meal.  Yum!

And the evening really isn't complete until at least one of us ends up on the floor from laughing too hard.