Not on the menu

     As I mentioned yesterday, in the Pacific Northwest Salmon appears on nearly every restaurant menu.  It can be prepared in any number of methods for breakfast, lunch or dinner.  Salmon hash, salmon salad, and grilled salmon are always artfully prepared and enthusiastically consumed.

     There is one salmon dish, however, that you won't find on any menu in any restaurant.  But it has been eaten and enjoyed by locals for hundreds of years.  The food that I am referring to is something called stinkheads.  It is the fermented fish heads of salmon.  Before refrigeration or canning fermenting fish was a common practice among the residents of the Pacific Northwest, the Native Americans in particular.  The process is simple:

1. Chop off the head of a King Salmon
2. Wrap it in grass
3. Bury it in a mossy pit for 4-6 weeks
4. Dig it up and eat

     If you can get past the putrid smell of the rotting flesh it is quite a memorable meal.  The fermentation makes the bones so soft you can chew them right along with the meat!