Salmon

Since I was a child the food scene in England has changed considerably. The 1950s, my childhood days, were a time of shortages. In this country we didn’t come out of post-war rationing until 1954. Even without rationing, things remained in short supply. By the 1960s we were into a period of strikes with bread & sugar rationing.

What brought this all to mind is the fact we had salmon for dinner. Indeed we’re having more salmon for dinner today, though cooked differently.

In my childhood, salmon came in tins. We were fortunate in that one of my uncles had a grocer’s shop & kept special titbits, such as tinned salmon & crab, on one side as he knew my mother loved them. For the Fox, salmon more often turned up as salmon paste.

From time to time we went into town. There was a fabulous game & fish shop on one corner. It was the sort of shop that had game birds hanging outside – no longer allowed due to health & safety. I would look in the window with longing at the, to me as a small child, huge whole salmons, all silvery & gleaming. You never saw them just as fillets or steaks. However, these fish were well outside the price range of any but the wealthiest. Needless to say, we never bought this fish.

These days, thanks to fish farming, salmon is in plentiful supply at reasonable prices that most people can afford. I for one relish the fact. You rarely see a menu without salmon fillet somewhere on the menu. I love it. The River Lune, which runs through Lancaster is a salmon river so sometimes we even get wild salmon.

Undoubtedly the real place to go for salmon is Alaska. There you can see the fish jumping up river to spawn. That is if they can avoid the bears on the way.

The view from our cabin window on morning when we went on a cruise to Alaska