Kingly Salmon

For thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest perfected ways to cook salmon, their most abundant food. They boiled the fish in watertight baskets, steamed them in underground rock ovens, and, in one of their tastiest preparations, smoke-roasted split sides of the salmon over an alder wood fire. To preserve fish for the winter, the Indians smoked their catch until it was fully dehydrated, but during the season, they cooked it similar to thi