[Sca-cooks] Food safe firewood

[Judith L. Smith Adams]

Here in the Pacific NW, tribal salmon feasts sometimes grill the fish on long sticks (or a modern iron grill), but also on cedar boards, which I am fairly sure (I'd look it up, but that chunk of my college book stash is packed or buried...) is a real, honest-to-gosh native cooking technique of the tribes along the Columbia River (what I call "local").
   
  Board-roasting the fish produces a crisper on one surface/juicier inside fillet.  Very yum.  These days, cedar of any kind is relatively scarce and expensive, and the boards are not reuseable, so I wouldn't expect it to be the universal method of choice in the present for a large feast, but before the area was logged out and native trading patterns pretty much wiped out, might have been another story.  AND, you can smoke salmon very nicely with alderwood, which is a weed-tree here, very common, and I'll just bet it was used for salmon-cooking, too, though I don't remember hearing so.  
   
  Away from the rivers, it's unlikely that wood was widely used in such a way, as the tribes used to burn off the brush in the valleys annually, and the only trees tough enough to survive in the hollows were oaks, of which there are still a few amazing old specimens.  Though given their weedy habits, any time the flames missed an area for more than a year or so, the alders would have been back... real pests, they are
   
  J

Mark Hendershott <crimlaw at jeffnet.org> wrote:
  At 10:43 AM 4/6/2006, you wrote:
>Your bowls, platters, plates,..etc. usually are made of hardwood as the
>softwood will be permeated by food residue and can be marred by blades more
>then the hardwood. (Though Maple seems to be a favored wood for cutting
>boards)
>With that you work your way through the hardwoods to see what works.
>Note that there are a variety of willows so stating that "willow' does this
>and "willow" does that is to broad. This goes for any tree variety.
>
>For firewood, hardwood burns longer then softwood. Cedar and Pine burn
>quickly because to the oils/resin.
>This is the first time I have heard Cedar used for flavoring. Would like
>more info.

Cooking salmon tacked to a red cedar (Western Red Cedar, not a true 
cedar) board over a fire is a PNW thing. I've seen cedar boards w/ 
instructions in cookware shops. It is said, I don't know with what 
authority, that this is the Indian way.

Simon Sinneghe
Briaroak, Summits, An Tir


>Take w/grain of salt due to fuzzy memory. I believe that Poison Ivy and
>Poison oak are plants you should not burn as the "oil" can and do go up with
>the smoke and you can breath them in.
>
>Lyse
>
>
>
>
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