Lakeside dinner menu

Thomas J. Story

Pan-fried Trout with Smoked Salmon

Recipe: Pan-fried Trout with Smoked Salmon
Hibler invented this 25 years ago when she had smoked salmon in the fridge and her kids brought in fresh trout. To pair with it, she likes complex, citrusy L’Ecole No. 41 Semillon 2007 (Columbia Valley).

Recipe: Yukon Gold and Fresh Herb Potato Salad
This easy salad is all about good potatoes, olive oil, and herbs. At the lake, Hibler likes to use society garlic (a perennial herb with an onion-garlic flavor) from her garden instead of chives.

Thomas J. Story

Arugula Salad with White Nectarines and Mango Chutney Dressing

The slightly tart and spicy dressing bridges the flavors of the sweet white nectarines and peppery greens. Feel free to use yellow nectarines or even peaches if you can’t find white nectarines.

Recipe: Arugula Salad with White Nectarines and Mango Chutney Dressing

Thomas J. Story

Huckleberry Skillet Cobbler

One of our all-time favorite desserts, with just a hint of spices to pull out the complex, wine-rich flavor of the huckleberries ― and also delicious made with blueberries. "It tastes the best for breakfast," Hibler confides.

Recipe: Huckleberry Skillet Cobbler

Recipe: Butter Pastry

Thomas J. Story

How to catch and clean trout

Get a license
Check online with your state’s fish and game department for details.

Buy the gear
Swing by a tackle shop for a pole and bait. Ask about any fishing restrictions for the area you’re going to.

Dispatch the fish
If you catch a fish, apply a quick, sharp blow to the top of its head with a hatchet handle or heavy stick to kill it instantly (the most humane way, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife).

Clean it
Make a shallow slit down the length of the belly. Gut the fish, then rinse well.

Thomas J. Story

Lakeside dinner

At this spacious log cabin on Swift Creek Reservoir, there’s no cell phone service or landline, no Internet, not even electricity. "Buying this cabin was the best thing we ever did," says Janie Hibler, author of several cookbooks about Northwest-style food. Time here in Washington’s Cascades, she says, is spent together: hiking, watching ospreys and bald eagles, cannonballing off the dock, and sitting down to meals that start right outside their door.

This weekend, as they’ve done for years, the Hiblers and their kids and grandkids fish for trout and pluck huckleberries on nearby Mt. Adams. With a few imaginative touches, Janie transforms these into dinner: salmon-stuffed trout cooked on the wood-burning stove, potato salad, and an arugula-nectarine salad. Dessert is the huckleberries, skillet-baked into a rustic cobbler. It’s a menu with the summery flavors of the landscape itself.

4 recipes for the perfect lakeside dinner

Pan-fried Trout with Smoked Salmon

Arugula Salad with White Nectarines and Mango Chutney Dressing

Huckleberry Skillet Cobbler

How to catch and clean trout

Lakeside dinner