Salmon Sisters Feed the World with Claire Neaton and Emma Teal - HAP #37

This week on the final episode of The Homer Alaska Podcast I sit down with Claire Neaton and Emma Teal of The Salmon Sisters. These two real-life sisters co-founded the successful clothing, gear, and wild-caught Alaskan seafood brand and we talk about their new cookbook, how they started the company, their roles as ambassadors of Alaskan seafood, and the future of fish marketing.

I also talk about fishing in Cordova this summer, our new Instagram Live content, and sit down with Dr. Minda Morris, PT at South Peninsula Hospital.

(1:29) Intro, Fishing in Cordova, IG Live
(12:56) SPH Rehab with Minda Morris
(17:29) "The Salmon Sisters" Claire Neaton and Emma Laukitis

Links

https://aksalmonsisters.com/products/salmon-sisters-cookbook

https://localcatch.org/

https://galleystories.podbean.com/e/ep-68-the-salmon-sisters-emma-clair-they-were-born-for-this/

www.TheAKShow.com

Interview Notes

They just released a new book “Salmon Sisters: Feasting, Fishing, and Living in Alaska”

What inspired it? For their family catching and eating seafood and living in a world where fish is part of an identity it was hard for them not to make a book. They’d talked about making a cookbook for a long time and sharing their family’s recipes. They couldn’t just put a few recipes in a book without a cohesive story about their lifestyle and how Alaska seafood is caught and the fisheries are managed.

They also wanted to talk about how they cook on the boat and being resourceful with limited ingredients.

Emma put in a lot of work using old and new artwork, putting together infographics, and putting together this coffee table-style book. It’s a combination of recipes from their mom to favorites at potlucks in False Pass to their young adult friends who have great salmon dip recipes.

Cooking on a boat more of a philosophy. It’s about using what you have and not following a recipe exactly. It’s also about simple ingredients like using canned beans and vegetables and frozen stuff. It’s not necessarily luxurious because they can’t go to the store or pick food from a garden.

The book has a mix between simple recipes and more “projects.”

Growing up, Emma and Claire’s mom was a great cook and a lot of her recipes are in the book. She took on the full time job of food production on the homestead which meant planting the greenhouse in the spring, raising chickens, and set netting for fish. They spent a lot of their summers smoking fish and puttng it up for the winter. They had a lot of the essentials from the land and sea and their mom used a lot of recipes from people in False Pass like traditional salmon and seafood recipes. She collected a lot of recipes and putting them in a three-ring binder. They learned a lot from their mom and tested their knowledge on the boat when they became crew fishing for their dad.

They always had family dinner growing up. Claire and Emma’s mom didn’t learn to cook until she moved up to Alaska in her early 20s and moved to Alaska. Now she loves to create food and share with her family.

They gained confidence cooking because on a boat if you make anything hot and on-time people love it.

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