Salmon Cakes -- The Kind of Supper Helen Would Have Called Sensible

The grandchildren left Sunday afternoon. By Monday morning the house was quiet again in the particular way a house gets quiet after children have been through it — not empty, exactly, but like a field after a storm, flattened in places and somehow more itself. I found a small red sneaker behind the woodstove. I found three blueberries on the windowsill above the kitchen sink, which I choose to believe were left intentionally. I found Frost asleep in the middle of the living room floor in a posture that suggested he had simply given up walking and decided to stop wherever he was. He looked satisfied. He’d had five people throwing sticks at him for two days. He’d earned it.

Helen worked the evening shift Monday and Tuesday. She has been a nurse at Fletcher Allen for thirty-four years, and she will work until she decides to stop, which will not be because I suggest it. I have suggested it once. I will not suggest it again. She comes home at eleven with her shoes off before she’s through the door, and she doesn’t want to talk about her day, and I don’t ask, because a man who spent eleven months in Vietnam and thirty-eight years teaching high school English understands that some days are better left unnarrated. We sit at the kitchen table for a while. She has tea. I have water. Frost puts his head on her feet. This is enough. This has always been enough.

The question, on the evenings she works, is what to make for supper. This is a question I have only recently had to start asking. Before I retired — that was last June, a year ago now, still strange to say — Helen fed us for the better part of forty years. I was the occasional weekend cook: Saturday pancakes, July Fourth chicken on the grill, the Thanksgiving turkey that I will not discuss in detail except to say that I now always check for the giblet bag. But the daily, reliable, five-nights-a-week feeding of the Bergstrom household was Helen’s domain, and she ran it the way she ran everything: efficiently, without waste, and without the particular brand of theatrical sighing that I am told some people use to indicate they are doing more than their share. Helen did not sigh theatrically. She just did things.

Now I do them. Or I try. I am better at it than I was a year ago, which is not saying much, because a year ago I burned oatmeal twice in the same week. The first time, I understood. The second time, I sat down at the table and had a serious conversation with myself about attention. I have not burned oatmeal since. Progress.

What I have learned, in fourteen months of retirement and the cooking that comes with it, is that the best suppers are usually the ones that don’t require much thinking. Not because thinking is bad — I spent four decades encouraging other people to think, and I believe in it — but because by six o’clock on a Tuesday evening in July, after a day of garden work and firewood and whatever project the farmhouse has decided needs my attention that week, thinking about dinner feels like homework I didn’t assign myself. What I want is something straightforward. Something that uses what’s in the pantry. Something, as Helen would put it, sensible.

Helen has a word for food she approves of: sensible. It is the highest compliment she gives a meal. Not delicious, not impressive, not creative. Sensible. It means the thing does what it is supposed to do, doesn’t cost more than it should, and doesn’t require equipment you don’t own or ingredients you can’t pronounce. When I make something sensible, she says so. When I make something that is the opposite — which happened once, when I found a recipe in a magazine and decided to make it because it had a photograph that made it look straightforward, and it was not straightforward, and we ate dinner at nine-fifteen — she does not say that. She eats it. She is quiet. Her silence is eloquent.

Salmon cakes are sensible. I want to say that plainly, because this is the recipe I am writing about this week, and I think the reason it works — the reason I make it often, the reason Frost has learned to recognize the sound of the can opener — is that it asks very little of you and gives back something genuine. Canned salmon, which my mother kept in the pantry the way some people keep canned beans — always, without question, because you never knew when you’d need it. A few crackers. An egg. Some onion. Mustard, if you have it, which I always do, because Helen considers a kitchen without mustard an oversight of the first order. A little butter in the pan. Ten minutes, maybe twelve.

My mother made them. She called them salmon patties, which is the same thing with a different name, and she made them on Fridays during Lent and occasionally when money was tight, which in the hardware store business could mean any month of the year depending on the weather and whether contractors were building. They were not fancy. They were not meant to be. They were hot and filling and they tasted like the kind of food that knows what it is.

I started making them last fall, when Helen was working three evening shifts a week and I was standing in the kitchen at five-thirty trying to remember whether I had defrosted anything and discovering that I had not. The pantry had canned salmon. I made salmon cakes. Helen came home at eleven, looked at the plate I’d left covered on the stove, and said, “Good. Sensible.” I took this as encouragement. I have been making them ever since.

There is a version of this where I tell you about some refinement I’ve made to the recipe, some technique I’ve discovered, some ingredient that elevates the whole thing. I don’t have that version. My mother’s recipe is my recipe, more or less, because it was already right. I use a little more mustard than she did, because I like mustard and because she is not here to tell me I’m wrong. I use a cast iron pan, because it is the pan I use for everything except boiling water. That’s the extent of my contribution to the lineage of salmon cakes in Vermont. It’s enough.

Tuesday evening I made them while Frost slept under the table. The sun was still up at six — July in Vermont, the days are long and the light comes in sideways through the west-facing kitchen window and hits the copper pot that hangs above the stove, the one Helen found at an estate sale in Shelburne in 1988 and that I have never once used but have also never taken down, because it was ten dollars and she was proud of herself and it looks good in the evening light. I fried the cakes in butter. I made coleslaw from the cabbage in the garden. I sat on the porch and ate dinner while the light went down behind the ridge and the swallows came out over the garden and Frost sat beside my chair and pretended he was not interested in my plate, which was not convincing.

Helen came home at eleven. I’d left two salmon cakes covered on the stove and the coleslaw in the refrigerator. She ate standing at the counter, which is how she always eats when she comes home late — still in her scrubs, still in that state of almost-decompressed that nurses carry home from the hospital the way teachers carry home chalk dust. I sat at the table and had my water. Frost put his head on her feet.

“Good,” she said, when she was done.

I didn’t ask if she meant sensible. I knew she did.

Helen’s one word — good — was enough. Salmon cakes are the kind of meal that doesn’t ask anything of you, which is exactly what a Tuesday in April sometimes requires. Here’s how I make them.

Salmon Cakes

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 12 minutes | Total Time: 22 minutes | Servings: 4 (2 cakes each)

Ingredients

• 2 cans (14.75 oz each) pink or red salmon, drained well, skin and large bones removed
• 1/2 cup finely crushed saltine crackers (about 12 crackers)
• 1 large egg, beaten
• 1/4 cup finely minced yellow onion
• 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
• 1 tablespoon yellow mustard
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon salt, or to taste
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, for frying

Instructions

1. Drain the salmon. Open the cans and drain them thoroughly. Press the salmon against the strainer or colander with the back of a spoon to get the liquid out. Pick through the salmon and discard any dark skin and large bones. The small soft bones are edible and you can leave them in — they break up when you mix and add calcium, which my mother always mentioned and I pass along without endorsement or argument.
2. Mix the binder. In a medium bowl, combine the beaten egg, mayonnaise, mustard, lemon juice, pepper, and salt. Stir until uniform. This is your binder, and getting it right means the cakes hold together in the pan without being gummy. If your salmon is very wet despite draining, add an extra tablespoon of crushed crackers later.
3. Combine the mixture. Add the drained salmon, minced onion, and crushed crackers to the bowl. Mix with a fork, breaking up any large chunks of salmon, until everything is evenly incorporated. The mixture should be moist enough to hold its shape when pressed but not so wet it falls apart. If it feels too loose, add a few more crushed crackers and give it another minute to absorb.
4. Form the cakes. Divide the mixture into 8 equal portions. Press each portion between your palms into a patty roughly 3 inches across and 3/4 inch thick. Set them on a plate. If you have time, refrigerate them for fifteen minutes — they hold together better cold. If you don’t have time, proceed. I rarely have time.
5. Heat the pan. Melt the butter in a large cast iron skillet over medium heat. When the butter foams and the foam begins to subside, the pan is ready. Do not rush this step. A pan that is not hot enough will give you cakes that stick. Patience here is rewarded.
6. Fry the first side. Place the cakes in the pan with room between them — do not crowd. Cook undisturbed for 5 to 6 minutes, until the bottom is deep golden brown. Resist the urge to press them down or move them around. They will tell you when they’re ready by releasing cleanly from the pan. If they resist, they are not ready.
7. Flip and finish. Flip each cake carefully with a thin spatula. Cook the second side for 4 to 5 minutes, until equally golden. The inside will be fully cooked through. Transfer to a plate and serve immediately, or cover and leave on the stove for up to two hours if someone you know is coming home late from a long shift and will want something warm.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 310 | Protein: 34g | Fat: 15g | Carbs: 9g | Fiber: 0.5g | Sodium: 680mg