- Nature, the most powerful creative force on earth.
(intense orchestral music)
I'm Chef Melissa King.
Cooking has taken me to incredible places.
Magical.
From TV competitions and celebrity galas
to countries around the world.
I'm heading out to places I've never been before
to seek out new experiences
and to create new dishes inspired by nature.
This is amazing!
I'm teaming up with some of the world's greatest explorers
to go further than I've ever gone before.
- [Kiliii] This environment is challenging.
- To push my craft, creativity, and my cooking.
This is Tasting Wild.
(wind whistling)
Frozen landscapes fascinate me.
That's why I've come to Mount Baker
in Washington's Snoqualmie National Forest.
The mountains are snow capped year round
and the land's been carved by glaciers over millennia.
I don't spend a lot of time in cold climates,
so I'm excited to be here to push myself and my craft.
Leading me on this journey
is National Geographic Photographer,
Kiliii Yuyan.
Hey, Kiliii. - Hey there.
- How's it going?
- I'm so excited to meet you.
- So great to meet you.
So, where are we headed?
- We are headed up the mountain.
And it's gonna be epic.
- All right, let's go.
- All right, let's do it. - Put your stuff in the car.
- [Kiliii] As the National Geographic Photographer,
it's my job to tell the stories of the Far North
and the Indigenous Peoples who live in it.
Hopefully, my photographs help to move people
to return to connecting with the land
and remembering the lessons that it has for us.
And one of the best parts of being a Nat Geo Explorer
is being asked to impart knowledge and to inspire people.
So I want to immerse Melissa in nature.
- I've been cooking for 20 plus years
and I'm always discovering something new.
And a lot of that has to do with nature,
not just relying on your taste buds.
It's relying on your sight, your smell,
and really finding ways to kind of add in those cues
into my food.
- I love that.
There's something really ancient
about taste and smell, right?
Like, you smell something or you taste something,
and it instantly transports you back to that place
where you were when you last had that.
- I'm excited to see what's in this river over here.
Trout and salmon and great river fish.
- The Nooksack River,
which we're paralleling right now,
it starts with the snow up high,
and then as that snow melts and becomes a tiny stream,
it gets bigger and bigger as it comes down.
All that water is the lifeblood of this ecosystem.
We're starting to get into these places
where I feel at home
and you already start to see the snow
and that's definitely what I love.
- I'm ready for it.
(soft orchestral music)
Woo!
Wow.
- This is pretty much my happy place.
- It's my new happy place now.
(laughing)
- This area actually holds the record
for the most snowfall anywhere in the world
in a single year.
- Wow.
The air is just so crisp and clean here.
You could like smell the pine and the spruce.
- You want to get geared up and head out?
- Yeah, let's go.
As a chef, I'm here to find inspiration in nature
and apply it to my craft of cooking.
There's so much power in this beautiful glacier.
I want to create a dish that represents everything
that we're seeing here.
This is very different than California, where I'm from.
We're used to sunny beaches.
(laughing)
(wind whistling)
I'm curious what grows here.
- Well, this kind of alpine environment
is a lot like the tundra of the arctic.
Everything has to live
underneath this layer of snow for eight months a year.
Resilience. - Just like the will power
and resilience of life.
- Yeah.
Spring comes, the snow melts,
and then just like, boom, here we go.
- [Melissa] Wow.
- And they're reaching for the sky,
growing as fast as they can
'cause you can sort of see all these little pockets of life
that are just coming out.
Well, here we are.
You can see where the snow was all melted away
and it's pretty amazing.
This is the alpine blueberry and those are the flowers.
- Wow, these are so cute.
Like cute little garnishes.
I'm gonna eat one.
I can't resist.
- What does it taste like?
- It has like a little sweetness from the nectar.
I love sourcing things locally
and just foraging straight off the trees
and finding ways to really tell a story through my food
because I don't know,
it's my love language.
That's how I think.
It's how my brain works.
- I also tell stories through the building
and crafting of things.
And one of the things that I craft
and make by hand is something we're actually gonna need
in just a moment.
So yeah, why don't we head on and check it out?
- Okay, I'm curious.
- [Kiliii] One of the striking things about this place is
this is where you can literally see glacial ice
and water carving this land into the forms that they see.
Nature's a master craftsman that forms the lakes here.
- Yeah, I'm already tired.
(laughing)
- And here it is.
It's a magic spot.
Upper Bagley Lake.
- Wow.
Yeah, what kind of fish are hanging out down there?
- Well, there's brook trout in some of these alpine lakes,
so hopefully we'll be able to catch one.
- I've never caught a fish before,
but I'm excited to try.
- [Kiliii] Yeah, right on, yeah.
- So, how are we gonna get there?
- Well, we'll hike around,
but before we do, first let's grab some kayaks.
- Amazing.
- [Kiliii] I am a National Geographic Adventurer,
but I'm also a traditional kayak builder.
Kayaks are traditional from my Nanai culture,
so I spent a lot of my teenage years
and early twenties learning to build the kayaks
not only of my people,
but different communities across the Arctic,
which led me on the road to finding elders
where I was able to learn from them
because I'm holding onto an entire culture's traditions.
- The kayak smells so good.
What is it made of?
- Oh, yeah!
So the internal frame is western red cedar.
- That's what it is.
- These are all handmade
and this is a millennia old Indigenous technology.
To this day, there are no kayaks as light
and as strong as these.
These joints,
they're actually tied together
so that they have some movement
which allows the joints to flex.
Let's get 'em in the water.
- So excited.
I've kayaked a couple times in my life,
but never like this.
The water is incredibly calm.
It's so still.
There really is a peacefulness to this place.
- [Kiliii] Traditional kayaks are special
in that you're not as insulated from the water itself.
I hope that Melissa get the chance to feel that
because the kayaks flex,
she can feel the water and even the cold through her legs.
- As a chef, we tend to get stuck in kitchens.
I love being outdoors.
I think that's, for me, a way that I find inspiration
and a way that I can connect deeply with what's around me.
You're a good teacher.
You gotta teach me how to make one of these boats.
- Building kayaks is a craft,
but absolutely what you do is absolutely craft.
- It's similar, I think.
I'm sure with you, with your boats,
is it ever perfect?
- No, it's never perfect,
but I actually kind of love that too.
- You're always learning new techniques,
new ways to make a dish better or make a boat better.
I want to find a way to utilize what's here in these lakes
to create my dish.
Kiliii said there was brook trout
and I'm really hoping to catch one.
Did you catch anything?
(laughing)
The fish aren't really biting,
so I'm going to pick up some locally sourced trout
in the morning before we head out.
Thank you so much for taking me on that adventure yesterday.
It's the coolest thing I've ever done.
- No, of course.
It was super fun for me too.
- I foraged for a few ingredients
and I'm really excited to cook you dinner.
- [Kiliii] All right.
- [Melissa] I found a really cool place
up on the top of the mountain that I'm gonna take you to.
- [Kiliii] Awesome!
- I hope it works for you.
- Yeah, that's amazing.
Look at that.
Woohoo.
From here, there's a vantage point
where you can see Mount Shuksan
and there's ice breaking off the glacier
and tumbling down the mountain.
- I hope you're hungry.
- Definitely.
- Let's set up shop here.
All right, so Kiliii,
why don't you make yourself comfortable here?
I'm gonna set up the prep station and also start the fire.
- Cool.
I'm gonna grab my camera actually.
- [Melissa] When I cook,
I want to transport you to another place,
take inspiration from what's around me,
and hopefully tell a story through that dish.
- All right, put me to work. - Yeah?
We have some spruce that we foraged.
I'm gonna have you chop that up.
Do you have a knife?
- Sure do.
- That's awesome.
Okay, you're ready to go.
What's the story behind your knife?
- Well, this is a traditional knife
belonging to one of our neighboring tribes actually,
and they're really famous for knife making.
Yeah, it's reindeer antler.
- [Melissa] What do you use it for?
- I use it mostly for building kayaks actually.
- [Melissa] Oh really?
- [Kiliii] It's a great all-purpose hunting knife.
- Your knife and my knife look very different.
(laughing)
We have this beautiful trout,
some spruce needles, salmon berries.
These could go really nicely inside the trout.
I'm also gonna throw some lemon slices.
- [Kiliii] That is just beautiful.
- I thought about salt baking it 'cause to me,
that represents the glacier,
all of that snow that we saw.
And so here's our mound of salt.
Have egg whites to bind it all together
along with those different types of pine needles
that we found around the area.
The pine salt reminds me of all that life
that was really growing underneath the snow.
And we're gonna bury this trout right now.
I know we didn't catch this fish yesterday,
but we still are working with some trout
because that's what's in these waters.
We wanted to bring that to the table.
- Well, that's why they call it fishing, not catching.
- True.
So we're gonna hide that trout beneath the snow.
- [Kiliii] Cool.
- A little trout glacier.
It's gonna be like slow cooking.
And when we were up there,
there with such an element of time
and everything moving slow and evolving.
Rather than just grilling the fish,
I thought why don't we just slow bake it?
When you slow bake a fish with salt,
you're really sealing and trapping those flavors inside.
Also gonna brew us some tea.
- Ooh, all right. - Yeah.
- [Kiliii] Nice.
- We're gonna do some pine tea
with some of those berries that we've gathered.
This trout is gonna take a little while to cook,
so we have some time to take in this incredible view.
It's pretty epic to be up here
with a National Geographic Photographer.
- [Kiliii] Hitting the shutter is like putting the period
at the end of a sentence.
When you make a photograph,
all of the work happens beforehand.
That's just like it is with you.
- [Melissa] Yeah, I guess with cooking,
the journey that dish has gone through,
it all ends at the moment the person actually tastes,
and the flavors and the memories that are attached to it.
- [Kiliii] That's really cool.
It's kind of amazing how similar that is.
- It's very similar.
All right, let's check out this fish.
- Oh cool, the big reveal.
- Oh, it smells good.
Check it out.
- Cool. - That looks awesome.
- Whoa, nice.
- Slow cooked right there.
That's a big filet for you.
- [Kiliii] Woohoo.
- Oh, that's looking perfect.
- [Kiliii] Brilliant.
- Okay.
Some of this salsa verde on there.
- [Kiliii] Awesome, what a cool pairing.
- That's yours right there, my friend.
- [Kiliii] Beautimous, thank you.
- All right, should we sit down and eat?
- Yeah.
Such a familiar and lovely smell.
Oh yeah. - Cheers.
- All right, cheers.
- Yeah, yeah, very good.
- I'm excited about this.
- Mm, no, that's excellent.
Compliments to the chef!
Well done, well done!
Yeah.
I can definitely taste the natural world in this.
It's excellent.
- Thank you.
I've salt baked many fish in my career,
but never like this,
and so thank you for just showing me the outdoors,
taking me to new places,
and helping me find inspiration
in ways that I never thought.
- No, thank you. (laughing)
Really, thank you.
- The only thing that's gonna make this better
is if we catch the fish next time.
- All right.
Next time, singing for trout.
- You're taking me out.
- Okay.
- Geonbae. - Geonbae!
Maybe it's the mountain air, or the glacial waters,
or all of the life starting to break through the snow,
but I'm coming away from Mount Baker so energized
and appreciative for what nature has given us here.
(contemplative orchestral music)