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turn would make it easier to shave off the old paint in preparation for a fresh coat.
    My great-uncle Ludvig met us at the boathouse and he, Stellan, and Dad waded into the water, wearing rubber boots that came up to their thighs. They surrounded each boat and, on the count of three, pushed and pulled it up to the shore as cold, brackish water sloshed out. They tilted it to one side, dumping out the rocks and the last of the water, then inverted it over two thick boards they’d laid out on the beach.
    I grabbed my own scraper and joined the men as we took the paint off each boat until it revealed its shell of plain wood. Every once in a while, Ludvig might correct my grip or Stellan would remind me to go along the grain of the wood instead of across it. We kept going until each boat was as brown and smooth as a walnut shell. In thehours that I worked my father said nothing, but I basked in his smile—so much more relaxed and easy than it ever was at home.
    U NCLE T ORSTEN WAS A TALL MAN , easily clearing six feet, and he kept his wiry salt-and-pepper hair tamed and slicked back with plentiful amounts of grease and the comb he holstered in his pocket. For more than fifty years he had supported his family by wrestling his living from the sea, and it showed in the deep lines and dark tan of his face. He had hard, rough hands, a ready laugh, and an easy grin, and he smelled, alternately, of tobacco and alcohol, musky and sweet. He was, to my mind, a Swedish version of the Marlboro Man.
    Torsten was a strong old man. Freaky strong. Farmer strong. Even after he’d retired from fishing, he could lift an
eka
, a stout wooden rowboat, and flip it onto its blocks, by himself, as easily as a mother turns a baby over to change its diaper. By this time—he must have been in his late sixties then—Torsten earned his living as a handyman for summering Norwegian tourists and the island’s fish processing plant, Hållöfisk. He wore paint-splattered overalls, and balanced a ladder on his bicycle as he rode from job to job. He also loved a stiff drink. He had this thermos of black coffee spiked with homemade vodka, and he carried it with him everywhere. When friends visited him from the city, they brought him Jack Daniel’s, a rare and luxurious treat. But Torsten, deep down, was a man of simple tastes and comforts: He liked his vodka moonshine better than anything you could buy in a store.
    Later, I’d think of men like Torsten and Stellan often as I made my way up the punishing ladder of the world’s finest kitchens. Those Smögen men, and I count my father among them, were unafraid of hard work. They were their own doctors, therapists, and career counselors. I constantly reminded myself that they would never quit a job just because of the name-calling and plate-throwing and brutal hours that are common in a professional kitchen. I made it my business to be tough in the ways that they were tough—on the inside, where it counted.
    The best memories of that first trip alone to Smögen with my father were when Torsten invited me to his smokehouse. My time spent in the kitchen with
Mormor
, combined with my own growing passion for food, had me intrigued by the process of culinary transformation: How did you take one thing and end up with something so different? Uncle Torsten’s smokehouse—the mysterious, rectangular wooden building at the back of his yard—was as important as any course I would take in culinary school. Here, I could watch that transformation occur.
    There was a loop of rope where the door handle should have been and when I pulled it open, a surge of smoke practically sucked all the air out of my lungs. The fire pit was a smoldering oil drum in the center of the room. Torsten tugged on a pipe while he smoked the fish: tobacco smoke mixing with the pungent smell of the curing solution mixing with the driftwood smoke to create the kind of odor that would penetrate deep into your skin and cling to your clothes through