Taste Of The Wild: Blackened Fish Caesar Salad

A great warm-weather meal, or a treat for an evening when you want something special but not heavy. Pictured here with blackened king salmon, but it also works well with sockeye, silver salmon, walleye, striped bass, or king mackerel, or any fish with real flavor. (Milder white fish like halibut will soak up the seasoning but lose most of its own fish flavor once blackened.)

Serves 4
The Salad

• ½ head romaine lettuce per person, chopped or torn

• 2 slices sweet onion per person, cut into 2-inch strips

• Salt and pepper, to taste

• 1 tbsp shredded parmesan per person

THE DRESSING
Minced garlic - 3 tbsp
Dijon or coarse mustard - 2 tbsp
Anchovy paste - 1 tbsp
Worcestershire sauce - 2 tbsp
Lemon juice - 2 tbsp
Olive oil - 3 tbsp
Finely grated parmesan - 4 tbsp
Mix all ingredients together.

THE FISH

• 1 boneless fish filet, cut into 1-inch-thick strips

• ½ cup Cajun seasoning (Zatarain's recommended)

• 1 tbsp smoked paprika

• 1 cup Italian seasoned breadcrumbs

• Olive oil, for frying

Dust the fish strips in the seasoning mix. Fry in hot olive oil — a cast iron skillet works best — turning when the strips darken. Cook each batch no more than 5 minutes total; you want a blackened outside with a moist interior.

ASSEMBLE
Toss the dressing into the salad, then top with the blackened fish strips. Some like a bite of fish with each bite of salad; others prefer to eat them separately — either way works.

Note: Serving a crowd, or making this a side dish? Crumble the cooked fish over a large salad and toss it all together.

Rodger That: Change

In my upcoming book Echoes in a Stone (September 1, 2026), a middle-aged couple, Brandt and Andrea, who have spent a decade working day and night to make their fortune realize, finally, that the dream they have been chasing might have been a nightmare. They stare at each other, dressed in worn clothing, their hands torn and sore, their faces prematurely aging, and stop.

In one day, after thousands of days of commitment, two things happen. First, they wrap their arms around each other and decide to take charge of redirecting their lives. Second, a new dream appears. But is it also a nightmare?

Persistence has always been a building block of my life and the lives of most of the people who I believe are successful. With that said, beating your head against a door hoping that it will open has never seemed prudent to me. It's true that, as Jack London once wrote, "Life is not always a matter of holding good cards but sometimes playing a poor hand well." Still, after playing that hand, sometimes for years without winning, it has been my personal experience that it is time to fold. Not just fold, but to find a new game.

In Echoes in a Stone, the new game offers promise beyond their wildest dreams and problems they never knew could exist. But every opportunity comes with problems. Brandt and Andrea decide to change, forcing their heads and hearts in a new direction. Chasing the new dream, even with possibly terrifying consequences, is better than beating their heads against that locked door.

I remember when I hung up a successful business career to become a writer. Part of what moved me was reading an essay about George Bernard Shaw, in which he noted, "Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."

There is a lot of me in the story of Brandt and Andrea, and a lot of all of you who quit a life that wasn't working in order to find one that makes you happy.

Rodger’s Two Cents: Wishful Thinking

I am currently writing a book about the demise of one of today’s most arrogant and damaging world figures. I guess that it is a bit of wishful thinking from someone who loves to take an idea and flesh it in to create a stimulating story.

There are several world figures that this could be about, but in this case, it is about one man who, until he rose to power had accomplished nothing. His rise was so unexpected that he interpreted it as almost a divine moment. He believed that if he could will himself into the spotlight, then that same will would make him almost unstoppable. If he could dream it, it would happen, and no one and nothing would stop him.

In the United States today, we have a major problem about empathy and sympathy. To many of us, showing sympathy to those who are less fortunate, discriminated against, or troubled has led us to demand that society solve the problem. Others of us employ empathy and command ourselves to help, even if it is a little, even if it is to show others how to help themselves. 

I’d love to see both sides compromise on this divide. One person’s problem is not necessarily caused by society. But not all people can solve their problems without some societal reform. But even more importantly, I have come to believe that this divide is a good example of why the government and society that our ancestors built in America works. 

But the leadership in Russia does not have this debate. Vladimir Putin allows no criticism. He tolerates no debate. To him, empathy and sympathy are weaknesses that are intolerable. He despises the history of Nazi abuse in his own country without seeing the same divine arrogance in his own leadership.

We kick, we bite, we scratch in this country and we always have. Even the elected leaders that some among us might not like will term out someday. But that is not true in Russia. So, my question to you is, as I write my story about Putin, how should it end?

Rodger Recommends: The Paul Mcgrath Series

I had a great conversation recently with author Andrew (Grant) Child, the brother of Lee Child. 

It was part of my writer-to-writer interviews, with five-to-ten-minute segments posted on my YouTube page every Wednesday.

Andrew took over writing the Jack Reacher Series from his brother a few years ago. His focus on the extraordinarily successful series follows a career writing some truly fun novels of his own. I personally loved his Paul McGrath novels. Paul, a former military cop (like Jack Reacher), works in a custodial role — a nondescript, everyday man with a passion for righting wrongs.

Andrew grew up in Birmingham, England, a book in hand. His favorite character was Robin Hood, a character with humanistic fervor and skills and a passion for defending ordinary people being abused by the powerful. Unlike Reacher or Mark Greaney's Gray Man characters, Paul McGrath doesn't leave gun smoke in the air wherever he goes. His intellect and the skills of an old-school gumshoe slowly chip away at the armor that the powerful use to avoid accountability for bullying and stealing. It is a blast to observe the powerful slowly realize that their world is collapsing around them without knowing who is responsible or why. Somehow it is more satisfying than seeing them blown to bits.

I love a shoot 'em-up, but between television and the plethora of superhero movies, we are inundated by them. It's fun to read a book that challenges the reader to think. Does the hero see the clues that the reader sees? Is the character truly evil, or just a little odd? Is the damsel in distress really an innocent girl? How is our 170-pound hero going to stand up to the 250-pound muscle protecting the bad guy? Settings so real that you are there. Plots that make you think, put you the reader into the story.

There's a bit of Robin Hood in most thriller adventure books, including mine. Both my historical-frontier adventure Gritt Series and my thriller Walker Series are written to make you think, to become part of the story yourself. Because so many of my stories are set in places most of my readers will never see — jungles of Mexico, the frozen North Sea, windswept Aleutian Islands, Siberia — I write to help the reader visualize the settings in their own imagination. Like Andrew, I invite my readers to be part of the setting and story. Look for books that make you think, from writers who know that when most of us find ourselves in terrible danger, there is little chance that someone is going to come charging in on a white horse to save us. We can save ourselves.

One other thing connected Andrew and me. After years of living in huge cities, Andrew and his wife took a cross-country driving trip and "found" the beauty and peace of wilderness Wyoming, where they bought a home. Alaska brought me that same peace years ago. We talked about how amazing it is to stop writing long enough to watch a moose wander across our property, possibly followed by a bear — a story of predator and prey. It is up to the moose to save itself.

Taste Of The Wild: Barbequed King Salmon

One of the amazing things about living in Alaska is our ability to harvest most of the protein we eat. In June the first salmon runs of the year push into our bays and then Alaska’s cold, clear, rivers. I try to catch a couple or kings each summer. (For years I kept a dozen, but the runs today are a fraction of what they used to be.) King Salmon from the market can be expensive, but worth it.

Ingredients for grilled King Salmon (serves 4)

I cooked this on a gas grill but admit I prefer charcoal like at our remote cabin.

4     Rectangular king salmon fillet pieces about 4 x 6 inches, skin on

4     T. light cooking oil

4     T. Barbeque sauce

Grilling King Salmon

Heat the grill to a medium heat, and then brush the fillets with the cooking oil, both skin and flesh side.

Place the fillets on the grill flesh side down and cook until the tiny dots of cooked fat appear on the sides of the fillet just above the heat source (about 4 minutes).

Turn the fish, to skin side down and slather BBQ sauce on the flesh side and continue cooking until the tiny white dots of fat sprinkle the entire side of the fillet (about 5 minutes). The BBQ sauce on top should be hot and steaming. Serve immediately.

I like to grill this with a homemade fermented Jalapeno BBQ sauce. I’ve never disclosed the recipe, and I won’t here. I really don’t know you yet, and I’d hate to have to kill you. But below is a simplified recipe that works well.

I love serving King Salmon with grilled corn on the cob and spiced cabbage.

Spiced Cabbage

Begin browning four chopped slices of bacon, and two minutes later add ½ of a sliced yellow onion and continue cooking until onion becomes transparent. Add ¾  head of cabbage shredded and continue cooking for six minutes, stirring every couple of minutes.  Stir in ½ cup of apple cider vinegar and ½ cup of brown sugar and cook until cabbage is soft.

Simple BBQ sauce

Mix these ingredients at least six hours before cooking to allow flavors to merge.

1 C. smokey store bought sauce, (Baby Rays)

½ C. salsa

½ C. dried onion flakes

¼ C. Worcestershire Sauce

1 T. each salt and black pepper

Rodger That: Something Different

I write both thrillers, (with settings around the world), and frontier fiction where the craziness of man against man occurs in wilderness settings; where the land itself, or the weather, or even the wildlife adds to the conflict, sometimes becoming another opponent, and occasionally becoming a refuge.

Carmen and I will once again attend Bouchercon, a convention of writers and readers, this year in Calgary. A high percentage of the writers and readers at this convention are aficionados of the mystery genre. With that in mind, I’ve focused on that genre in my own reading for the last two months. Here are my favorite authors from my time in the underworld. Robert Dugoni has been writing legal and police thrillers for decades. His book, Her Cold Justice was a fun read. A.C. Frieden, usually writes thrillers set across the globe. Last year he wrote his first mystery set in New Orleans. Dead In The Quarter is not the kind of book you read at bedtime; it might keep you awake. Gene Koon is a new writer, who like Frieden and me has extensive experience around the world. He ignored that part of his life and wrote a fun mystery set where you would never expect a thriller to occur. His book Another Try should be a cozy fireside story in quiet Oregon wine country, but it isn’t. Who knew that bullets and chardonnay pair well together? Jay S. Bell as himself and under a pseudonym has been writing mystery for decades. His book Welcome To Cottonmouth is one of the most intense action stories I’ve ever read. With dozens of books under your belt you can ignore many of the traditional rules of storytelling and make it work.

I encourage everyone who loves to read, to leap off from a cliff once in a while and pick up a good book in a genre that you might never normally read. For me, they are a window into challenging worlds I don’t normally visit. It’s amazing how often I will get a note from a reader who mostly reads romance, explaining that the romance in my thriller or frontier fiction books, set in crises settings, elevates passion to all new levels. I’m happy to respond to every note and to recommend another of my books or even one form another author who I read. 

Rodger's 2 Cents: The Times Demand It

Like so many, the war with Iran has left me with mixed feelings. My family lived in Iran prior to the 1979 Revolution. The leaders of the Iranian Army, Air Force and Navy all refused to use their troops against their own people protesting the government. After the Mullahs came to power by exiling or executing the socialists, communists and social democrats that helped them gain power, they turned on the former government. All three of the military leaders who refused to attack their own citizens were shot. My family lost a number of friends in the purges.

Since then, the regime has openly declared war on the USA and Israel and murdered tens of thousands of their own citizens. The current regime’s war on the United States has continued for forty-seven years. How did we get into a situation where smart capable American leaders have tolerated a low-key, decades long war waged against the USA, a war that included the Beirut Barracks bombing that killed hundreds of Americans? How did our allies in Europe and the Middle East allow one nation to promote and fund the majority or terrorist groups in the world?

What amazes me most is that the appeasement and coddling of the Iranian regime is so similar to how the West, and especially Britain, appeased Hitler in the lead-up to World War II. Years ago, I read a great book on the subject and recommend it. Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War by Tim Bouverie is an amazing read. 

It covers all the bases, mirroring what we have seen from American and allied leaders and Iran. First, we slapped the regime like one might slap a naughty child. Then we ignored them, thinking that they really weren’t that bad and would probably just go away. Next, we tried to engage with them diplomatically but knowing that they were right and that Allah was on their side, they felt free to lie, make promises they didn’t intend to keep and stall until they were so powerful, with weapons that made them unstoppable. Along the way, our leaders tried to pay them off, cajole them with flattery, and enter into treaties that, had they worked, might have postponed the development of Iranian power, but in the end just gave the regime more time to perfect their asymmetrical warfare capabilities. Imagine the world’s foremost terrorist regime with nuclear weapons.

Bouverie’s book on how the Allies dealt with Hitler was almost a blueprint for how the West has dealt with Iran. For decades, the regime has funded attacks on the West and openly killed its own citizens who dare to disagree. Like Hitler, they formed a second national army—IRGC, analogous to the SS—dedicated to the regime, rather than the country. And like the Brownshirts, who enforced Nazi dogma, the Iranians created the Basij, a militia whose only job is to crush domestic resistance. This has all been seen before.

What is different is that in the early years of Hitler’s rise to power, as much as 80% of the German people supported his movement. In Iran, less than half of the population supported the early rise of the Mullah regime. Today, roughly 20% support it, 60% oppose it, and the remaining 20% are simply keeping their heads down. You do not have to destroy the country to oust the regime. 

For those of you who question the war in Iran, that is one of our most treasured rights. But read Appeasement before you cement your thoughts. I’m not sure that our President is much of a reader, but someone on his staff is.   

Rodger Recommends: Real World Book Club

I was at a book club meeting not long ago, and during a conversation about my most recent book, Robber Barons, the theme turned to how lucky we are to live in the USA today. That book explores how the Robber Barons of the early 20th century not only dominated industrial America but also places like the territory of Alaska. It follows a small cadre of ordinary citizens, including steamship captains, fish cannery owners, teachers, ministers, Native villagers, as they battle the financial elite, in local government, Congress, and across Alaska, a territory twice the size of Texas. The industrial elite manipulated Congress to corner the fishing, timber, and mining industries as they developed in the territory. Their methods left people hungry, wounded or even dead. While the book tells an exciting tale of progress against power, it wasn’t until Alaska was granted statehood that its citizens truly began to control their own lives—better but not perfect.

One woman at the book club meeting strenuously objected to the idea that life today is much better than a hundred and twenty-five years ago. Armed with a list of deeply felt injustices and inequities, she was incredulous that most of us felt fortunate to live here and now. That got me thinking about my stories. 

Injustice and unequal outcomes are a fact of life, often troubling and demanding efforts to mitigate them, and rich subjects for great books. History is built upon the efforts of ordinary people trying to make things better. Compounding the problem is that values change over time. The majority of Americans in 1826 believed in slavery. The Civil War ended the legal framework for slavery, but it took another hundred years to end many people’s views on the race. Today there is still racism in the country, but no one advocates owning other human beings. The racism of the 1960s when Black citizens struggled just to feed their children, and when laws and neighborhood covenants limited where you could live, and where your children could go to school, is gone.

Especially those of us who have traveled the world recognize how fortunate we are to live in a country where the bottom 10% of households economically would be in the top 10% in much of the world. The citizens of Iran are right now celebrating other countries bombing their nation, hoping that a repressive government that kills women for not properly covering their hair will be destroyed. 

These conversations, triggered by books, is one of the great joys of book clubs. They are also important conversations in a divided nation. I’ve yet to meet a perfect person. But we can all be better and more knowledgeable, and we can rejoice in “better” even when it falls short of “perfect.” And I will keep on writing about it.  

Taste Of The Wild: Maharaja Stew

I first saw a version of this meal in Montana Outdoors magazine. I did some research and found that this recipe has its roots in the aristocratic 1800’s India’s ‘Shikar’ hunts. The elites of India and British colonials held lavish hunts on private game preserves, the hunts becoming aristocratic social events, with lavish meals. Now I’m a proletariat hunter myself, one who loves fair chase on public lands, but that doesn’t mean that the recipes from this tradition aren’t amazing.

INGREDIENTS
2 pounds of boneless game meat, (use tougher cuts like shoulder or neck—moose, venison, elk, goat, sheep, or pork), trimmed and cut into 1 1/2” pieces. *

2 sweet potatoes cut into 1” pieces

1 pound red lentils**

2 cups coconut milk, (solids and liquid whisked together)

3 (14 ounce) cans diced tomatoes

1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely minced

2 medium yellow onions chopped into large pieces 

6 cups chicken stock

Coconut oil or vegetable oil for browning

Seasonings:

For the meat, 2 T Cumin, 3 T kosher salt, 1 t cayenne, 3- T garam masala

For the stew, 2 cinnamon sticks, 8 cloves minced garlic

chopped cilantro for garnish

PREPARATION
Combine the meat and the meat seasonings and stir, cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours. 

Start the crockpot base: While the meat marinates, combine coconut milk, tomatoes, garlic and cinnamon sticks, jalapeno and chicken stock and heat on high for the 2-hour marinating period.

Brown the meat: Add cooking oil to a heavy skillet and brown the meat on all sides. Add the onions and cook until they are translucent.

Slow cook the stew: Add the meat mixture to the pot and cook on high for 4 hours, then add sweet potato and lentils and turn crock pot down to low heat for 2 additional hours. You may have to add a little water after the lentils are cooked.

Serve: Ladle into bowls and garnish with fresh cilantro. Serve with warm naan bread.

NOTES
*Meat: The traditional choice in India is Sambar Deer. I use moose, but this works with venison, elk, goat, or sheep and would probably work well with wild hog.

**Lentil substitution: If a guest has a peanut allergy and cannot eat lentils, substitute brown and wild rice, but reduce the water or broth by 1 cup.

Rodger That: The Rapid Change Of Industrialized America’s Economy

As America industrialized, the economy changed rapidly. Agricultural families who had produced much of what they needed gave way to wage earners dependent on industrialists. The cobbler who crafted shoes one at a time could not compete with factories using machines to cut production from days to hours. The industrialists, especially those with little compassion, became incredibly wealthy and entitled.

Family independence eroded as the farm and craftsman economy gave way to wages. There had always been employees, but to keep skilled help, compensation was a living wage. With industrialization, there were more workers than jobs and many were desperate.

Those who rejected that choice migrated to the frontier—almost always West and eventually north—where those willing to eke out a living searching for gold or trapping furs might thrive. 

But it was only a matter of time until the industrial class followed them. Small logging groups became Timber companies. Small mines became Mineral Corporations. Still, wages paid in those environments were better than the sweat shops of the East.

Unfortunately, some of the wealthy from the East decided they were entitled to own the West. They manipulated congress to grant them concessions for resources local people believed were theirs. Worse, with little or no law enforcement in the territories, some simply muscled aside the local population, much of it Native American, or eliminated the opposition altogether.

Robber Barons is a story of how one small group of local people fought back; how they tried to use the law and even to change the law. It is also the story of how they used the same skills that allowed them to survive in the West to fight fire with fire.