I had never heard of salmonberries, so towards the end of our trip to Alaska last month I bought a tiny jar of jam to try.
It tasted mostly like it tried, but there wasn’t any really memorable flavor beyond the pectin and honey holding it together and I’m still not sure what the salmonberries themselves were supposed to be like, so it was left sitting in the fridge.
Then came the Trader Joe’s veggie masala burgers.
Two leftover deli slices each of roast beef that needed to be eaten.
Two juicy but late tomatoes, chopped. Some nights have been cold enough to turn off the gene that makes tomatoes sweet, and after tasting a piece I knew I needed to balance that tartness and the patties’ heat somehow. Just a little bit of sweetness and…something. I went through the fridge and the cupboards, trying to figure out just the thing.
That salmonberry jam. It wouldn’t take much.
Okay, this was going to be weird but let’s try it. I scooped out a goodly tablespoon of the not very jelled fruit and stirred it into those tomatoes and covered the beef on top of the masala veggie rounds with it. Then I grated some sharp cheddar on top, a goodly amount, put the whole thing in the oven at 350 for ten and hoped.
I debated toasting some sourdough to scoop them onto afterwards but in the end did not.
The tomatoes and jam oozed into the burgers below and the whole thing gave way at the fork into more of a casserole effect, with a much better texture than those burgers had ever been before. This is what they’d needed all along.
I should have chopped the beef, too. But that little bit of tart and just enough sweet from the salmonberries completely pulled the whole thing together and left me wishing for more.
And here the whole time I’d been throwing these random ingredients at each other I’d thought of how my dad praised my mother’s cooking every meal. He would tell us, “You never get a dull meal with your mother.
Sometimes, though,” he would add, given Mom’s flair for experimentation, “it’ll be *interesting!*” And then he would guffaw that deep joyful celebratory laugh of his that made the whole world whole.