I think I've said it before, but our lodge is situated on the southeast shore of Skilak Lake, off the road system, and was grandfathered into a national wildlife refuge. It's about a five-mile paddle or twenty-minute boat ride to either a glacial outwash, a small bay with a forest service cabin, or a boat ramp that connects to the road. This hilly, washboardy gravel road runs nearly twenty miles and spits you out closer to either Cooper Landing or Soldotna. Cooper Landing is a tiny town with a few general stores and restaurants and scores of fishing and rafting outfitters. Soldotna is one of the conglomerations of strip malls and big-box stores that modern society has decided must exist every so often, endlessly metastasizing outward from whence it was spawned.
But hipster-bourgeois aesthetic has penetrated even rural Alaska. There's a kombucha "factory," the bookstore has a tiny fancy cheese shop tucked next to it -- and most significantly, there are $12 salmon-dill-creme fraiche waffles that have wedged deeply into my heart (served in an old Alaska Railroad train car remodeled as a diner, no less). Bits of salmon are integrated with the batter, which cooks up (irons up?) lighter and crisper than any other I've eaten.
It was a fun contrast to my previous breakfast of granola and old cheese slices at Doroshin Bay. A couple friends and I braved the mosquitoes in a protected corner of the lake to sleep in an old Russian gold prospector's cabin. We kayaked back to camp just before the wind picked up to stir the glassy water into whitecaps.
One more food story: I have found the perfect lemon tart. One of our recipe books credits the wonderful Daniel Boulud for its intense lemonyness; perhaps there's some traditional French or Italian technique in the background. But what it comes down to is grinding up ENTIRE lemons (minus seeds), plus the regular stuff.
Make and bake a shortbread crust. Then put this in it: 1 1/2 lemons, seeded and chopped, blended smooth with 1 1/2 c. sugar; add and blend together 1 egg, 2 yolks, 1 1/2 Tbsp. cornstarch, 1/2 c. cream, 4 Tbsp. melted butter; bake 45-60 min. at 350, until mostly set
