enlarge Michael Barriault photo/Courtesy of Eve’s at the Garden, Portland Harbor Hotel

This elegant version of salmon and peas – served on baby spinach with Maine pea purée and turned buttered potatoes – was prepared by Earl Morse, new chef at Eve’s at the Garden, the restaurant at the Portland Harbor Hotel. Morse plans to serve the dish on the Fourth of July.

UPDATED SALMON AND PEAS IS SMOKIN' GOOD

HERE'S AN UPDATED VERSION of the traditional July Fourth salmon-and-peas meal, courtesy of Joel Frantzman of Sullivan Harbor Farm in Hancock Village (www.sullivanharborfarm.com). Hot smoked salmon is smoked at a slightly higher temperature than cold smoked salmon. The texture is firm and flaky like baked, grilled or broiled salmon. Frantzman suggests pairing this dish with a ros wine.

HOT SMOKED SALMON TOAST ON BITTER GREENS SALAD WITH CHILLED PEA SOUP

Serves four.

HOT SMOKED SALMON TOAST

8 ounces hot smoked salmon

6 tablespoons olive oil

3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives

1 clove garlic

3 tablespoons rinsed capers

Pepper to taste

Good crusty bread such as a baguette

Place oil, parsley, chives, capers and pepper in a bowl. Crush garlic and add to herbs. Add crumbled smoked salmon to herbs and mix. Cut bread into 1/4-inch slices. Toast them lightly and lay on a baking sheet. Put 2 teaspoons of salmon mixture onto each piece of bread. Place into oven and broil until the bread beings to brown, about five minutes. Be very careful to not let bread burn.

CHILLED PEA SOUP

1/4 cup fresh mint leaves, loosely packed, or 1 tablespoon dried mint

2 pounds fresh peas, shelled, or two 14-ounce bags frozen peas

1/2 medium onion, coarsely chopped

Chicken broth

4 ounces sour cream

Place peas, onion and mint into a sauce pan. Add enough chicken broth to cover. Bring to a boil and simmer until onions are translucent, about 7 minutes. Let peas cool and then place in a blender and blend until smooth. Add sour cream. Place in refrigerator for several hours until cold. Serve with a dollop of sour cream and sprig of mint.

ARUGULA SALAD WITH SIMPLE VINAIGRETTE

Zest of one lemon

1 tablespoon lemon juice

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon finely chopped shallots

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Salt and pepper to taste

Combine ingredients in a bowl and whisk until all ingredients are incorporated. Toss in serving bowl with arugula or other mixed seasonal greens.

A great make-ahead meal that can be assembled quickly: Make the soup and salmon mixture the day before, then just before serving make the vinaigrette and toss into salad, finish the salmon toasts in the broiler, and serve everything together. The salmon toasts can also be served unbroiled on crostini to make this a truly quick-and-painless treat.

For most people, a brilliant fireworks display is the must-have accompaniment to the Fourth of July.

For Brenda and Tanya Athanus, it's a family dinner of salmon and peas.

Even after working a 14-hour day at the Green Spot, their specialty foods store near the Waterville town line in Oakland, the weary sisters still make time on the Fourth for the salmon-and-peas tradition they remember from their childhoods.

Tanya grills the salmon while her boyfriend shells the peas. Brenda makes the white sauce for the salmon, prepares the new potatoes, and rustles up some strawberry shortcake for dessert.

"To me, it's no different than eating turkey on Thanksgiving," Tanya Athanus said.

Salmon and peas on Independence Day is an old Maine tradition that hearkens back to the days when wild salmon were plentiful in the state's rivers, and peas were a tasty summer holdover of the traditional English diet. Old-time Mainers didn't plan to celebrate the Fourth this way; wild-caught salmon and home-grown peas were simply the foods that were available at this time of year after a long, hard winter and cool spring.

"The time to plant peas is as soon as you can plant them in the spring, so the traditional crop was a crop that you planted early and started having sometime in July," said Russell Libby, executive director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. "Over time, it turned out that that coincided with two other things. One is the salmon migration, so salmon would be coming up Maine rivers to spawn, and after 150 years or so, it also coincided with the Fourth of July celebration."

Food historian Sandra Oliver, however, is skeptical that the salmon-and-peas meal goes back much further than the mid-1800s.

In the early 1800s, all of Maine was going through a cooler climactic period, and in some years, there was potential for frost all year 'round. The year 1816 brought snow in June and a killing frost in July, courtesy of a volcanic eruption halfway around the world.

It's hard to believe, Oliver says, that Mainers growing peas under those conditions could have had a harvest by July 4.

Certainly by the late 1800s, salmon and peas was a notable meal. A quick online search reveals that in 1891, Dr. Bigelow T. Sanborn, superintendent of the Maine Insane Asylum in Augusta (now known by the more politically correct name Riverview Psychiatric Center) wrote in his diary: "All had salmon and peas on the 4th."

Oliver's "educated guess" is that the tradition popped up in the mid-1800s and flourished into the mid-20th century, when salmon stocks started to decline.

"The salmon stocks in Penobscot Bay were fading in the 1940s," Oliver said. "They were just about gone. So if someone had a salmon, it would have been a special thing."

The Athanus sisters, both in their 50s, grew up in Augusta. They still recall their mother buying a peck of peas from grower Frank Farnham every year on the way to their summer house in Belgrade. They bought their salmon from a local fish market.

"We always got a whole salmon, and my mother always poached it in her little Julia Child French poacher," said Brenda Athanus. "And then we had our peas, and new potatoes. She'd serve that with chives from her garden and homemade butter from her neighbor. We used to have quite a feast."

The salmon they bought was wild-caught, Tanya Athanus noted, and lots of families looked forward to this special meal.

'IT WASN'T RAISED SALMON'

"You know, back then, it wasn't raised salmon," Tanya Athanus said. "We used to get wild salmon, and you hoped that you could get enough, and that they really were going to be there. I think they even would get some from Canada. It was not as easy as it is now. That's why it was made to be so special, because the salmon was better."

The "real standard New England way" of eating salmon...