Salmon Cakes with Remoulade

The salmon cake is an act of respect. Generations of Pacific Northwest cooks, from Chinook fishermen to Scandinavian settlers to the cannery workers of Astoria, understood that you honor a fish by using every bit of it. These cakes exist because someone looked at leftover salmon and saw possibility rather than waste.

I've eaten salmon cakes in diners along the Columbia River where the coffee was bitter and the linoleum cracked, and I've eaten them in dining rooms with white tablecloths and obsequious waiters. The best versions share a common virtue: restraint. Too many recipes bury the salmon under breadcrumbs and mayonnaise until you can't taste the fish at all. That's not cooking. That's camouflage.

The secret here is potato. A small amount of cold riced potato binds the mixture without making it dense or gluey. The salmon stays flaky, the exterior fries to a proper golden crust, and when you break one open with your fork, you see actual fish rather than some homogeneous paste. The remoulade, tangy with capers and bright with lemon, does what a good sauce should: it complements without competing.

Fresh salmon works beautifully, but don't dismiss canned. Wild sockeye in the can often surpasses mediocre fresh fish from a supermarket case. The canneries along Puget Sound have been putting up salmon for over a century. There's no shame in that pantry. There's wisdom.