Northwest Fisheries Cookbook Author Event

Brad and I went to a Northwest Fisheries Association event on Wednesday night that was so much fun! Four Seattle-based chefs and cookbook authors cooked for us and then had cookbooks available for purchase that they autographed with personal messages. Each chef or cookbook author had a station from which they served their dishes. We were able to walk up and talk with each one and get a plate of food to take back to our table. The first cookbook author, Cynthia Nims, has written several cookbooks but she recently published a book called "Gourmet Game Night". The book provides recipes that are easy to serve when you have friends over for game night. It's a fun book and I am excited to have friends over to play a new game called Bananagrams. As a side note, this game is basically Scrabble without a board that is played for speed. Right up my alley for sure. This author served marinated shrimp with a cocktail onion. It was a tasty little bite.

The second cookbook author is a woman named Judith Dern who lived in Scandinavia for several years. While living there, she learned how to cook authentic Danish food and then wrote a cookbook called "Danish Food & Cooking". This is really fun for me because I don't know very much about my Danish heritage and I am certainly not well versed in Danish food. This cookbook will be fun for me to read and I am excited to prepare a few real live Danish recipes. She served a cauliflower soup that I couldn't try because it contained heavy cream. The third chef and cookbook author is the great Tom Douglas. It was such a pleasure to meet him! He is one funny guy. I have admired him for many years and have been to three of his restaurants but I had no idea how much fun it would be to meet him and talk with him. He served a special fried rice, long beans and crab egg fu yung. Delicious! I ended up purchasing his "Seattle Kitchen" cookbook and there are so many recipes I want to try. I have no idea how I'm going to choose which one to make first.

The last cookbook authors are sisters, Kiyo and Tomi Marsh, that own a fishing boat and have fished in the Bering Sea for many years. They wrote a cookbook called "The Fishes & Dishes Cookbook; Seafood Recipes and Salty Stories from Alaska's Commercial Fisherwomen". I am beyond excited to read this book because they devoted much of it to stories and anecdotes from their fishing experiences. I can tell from first glance that they poured a lot of themselves into this book. Even more exciting, my third recipe this week is from this cookbook. They served a miso cod that was out of this world. I had to promise Brad and Carl that I would make it for them in the near future.