WHAT DO YOU DO when it snows in Seattle? Make a Huckleberry Snow Cone!
While I was out skiing around the neighborhood this morning, my daughter was busy cooking down a cup of frozen huckleberries with water and sugar, then blending it in the Vitamix. After a quick straining she had a deep red, sweet and syrupy liquid to pour over packed snowballs—a perfect treat for a no-school Snow Day.
THE CHOKECHERRY (Prunus virginiana) is a shrub or small tree native to much of North America, mostly above the Mason-Dixon line. Here in Washington State, as in much of the Western U.S., chokecherries prefer drier habitats such as arid canyons, gullies, and scrubby benches above lakes or streams, where you’ll sometimes find them clustered with elderberries and serviceberries.
Named for their astringency, chokecherries get sweeter as they darken, but if you wait too long the birds and other critters will nab them first. And so, finding ourselves in a patch of not fully ripe chokecherries the other day, we picked them anyway.
At home we rinsed our chokecherries and then covered them with water in a kettle. The kitchen soon filled with a distinctive cherry aroma as they simmered on the stove. After processing the fruit we had a quart of fuchsia-colored juice which went right back into the pot.
The resulting jelly has a luminous color, right up there with rosehip Jelly. Even with added pectin, the jelly is soft and smooth, barely holding together, which is just how we like it.
This recipe is for 4 cups of chokecherry juice. It’s on the tart side. If you like your jelly sweeter, or you have less juice, adjust accordingly. You’ll need to add a commercial pectin because chokecherries are low in natural pectin.
4 cups chokecherry juice
5 cups sugar
1 package (1.75 oz) dry pectin
1/2 cup lemon juice
1. Cover chokecherries with water in a non-reactive stock pot and bring to boil over high heat. Reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes, occasionally mashing softened chokecherries with a potato masher. Allow to cool, then strain juice through cheesecloth.
2. Return 4 cups chokecherry juice to pot along with pectin and lemon juice. Bring to boil and add sugar, stirring. After a minute of hard boiling (careful not to foam over), reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring.
3. Remove from heat and skim foam. Ladle into sterilized canning jars, leaving 1/2 inch head room, and secure lids. Process jars in hot water bath for 10 minutes.
I have a favorite new berry. It’s called a nagoonberry. Haven’t heard of nagoonberries? Well, you’re not alone—and you probably don’t spend much time in Alaska, where I happen to be right now.
Here in Cordova, just about everyone knows the nagoonberry. And now that I do, too, I could be persuaded to journey north just to get my hands on these delicious “arctic raspberries,” never mind the salmon fishing.
The nagoonberry, Rubus arcticus, is a wine-red relative of blackberries and raspberries that grows in northern climates around the world, from Alaska and Canada to Finland, Scandinavia, and Russia. The name comes from Tlingit Indian “neigóon,” meaning little jewels that pop from the ground. The low-lying plant, with its three-lobed, serrated leaves, hugs boggy terrain on both the coast and interior of Alaska. They’re not prolific, though I’ve been told that berry-pickers in Cordova gather good quantities for jam, liqueur, and fruit leather. The flavor belies its geographical distribution with a tropical Hawaiian Punch twist on a typical blackberry.
By late August, the pickings around Cordova are slim, but yesterday there were still enough ripe nagoonberries in the wet, mossy meadows just off the roadside to give me a taste of something totally new. And now I’m hooked. These berries are something special and worth seeking out if you’re in the North Country.
THE RED HUCKLEBERRY (Vaccinium parvifolium), tart and pretty, is the first of our huckleberries to fruit in the Pacific Northwest. The trailing blackberry (Rubus ursinus), smaller and firmer in comparison to non-native relatives such as the ubiquitous Himalayan blackberry, with a more complex taste profile, is often nearby. Unlike other varieties, trailing blackberries don’t grow on upright canes; they snake along the ground and over deadfall, hence their common name.
Together, red hucks and trailing blackberries are a pastry chef’s dream team. Both species are usually present in the same woods and ripen at roughly the same time (generally throughout July in my habitat), which means you can forage both in a single outing.
Here’s a recipe for scones that uses yogurt rather than buttermilk. If you like sweet scones, add more sugar.
2 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
3 heaping tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick cold unsalted butter
1/2 cup wild berries
1/2 cup yogurt
2 tbsp milk
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp lemon zest (optional)
1. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Sift dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, sugar, salt) together into a large bowl.
3. Whisk together wet ingredients (yogurt, milk, and 1 egg) in a medium bowl.
4. Cut cold butter into small pieces and, using fingers, work into dry ingredients until mealy. Stir in berries, optional lemon zest, and wet ingredients until barely mixed, with a little of the dry flour remaining in bottom of bowl.
5. Remove to a floured work surface. Briefly knead dough so it holds together and forms a disk several inches in diameter and about an inch thick. The dough will be wet and you’ll be reminded of making mud pies as a kid—don’t fret! Cut a dozen or so wedges out of the disk and place on a greased baking pan. You may need to use a pie knife or spatula to transfer wedges from work surface to pan.
6. Whisk second egg and brush egg wash on wedges.
7. Bake until golden brown and cooked through, about 25 minutes. Cool on wire rack.
It’s berry time. I took a group of would-be foragers out to a state forest the other day, and they were amazed by the diversity of berries available for harvest right now. In fact, I had to crack the whip a few times to keep the gang moving, so entranced were they by the sweet bounty available trailside.
Red huckleberries and trailing blackberries (the native blackberry of the Pacific Northwest, Rubus ursinus) are at their peak. Non-native Himalayan blackberries are ripening in sunny spots and will be abundant in a couple weeks. Thimbleberries are past their peak at lower elevations, but you can go higher and find them in good shape. We also found blackcap raspberries, which I don’t see as frequently as some of the other species. A number of others that get overlooked by the average berry picker were ripening in forest openings, such as Oregon grape and salal (pictured at top), and will continue to be available deep into summer; though a challenge to the palate right off the vine, with a little processing and some added sugar, they can make excellent preserves, sauces, and leathers.
If you live in the Pacific Northwest, there’s a new book that provides in-depth information on just about all the wild berry-producing plants and trees you’re likely to find in the region, native and otherwise. T. Abe Lloyd and Fiona Hamersley Chambers’ Wild Berries of Washington and Oregon collects into a single volume more than fifty groups of berry-bearing plants, including well known varieties such as blackberries, raspberries, huckleberries, and serviceberries—and lesser-knowns: hawthorns, crowberries, hackberries, and many more.
I’ve often wondered about the tempting red berries of the mountain-ash, Sorbus spp. The authors begin their entry on the genus, “The bitter-tasting fruits of these trees are high in vitamin C and can be eaten raw, cooked or dried.” Apparently, a number of tribes in my area used them to “marinate meat such as marmot or to flavor salmon head soup,” and they’re also used in jellies, jams, pies, ale, and a bittersweet wine. The final verdict on edibility: Edible, but not great.
Many others, however, get two thumbs up. The text is sprinkled with recipes for making jams, jellies, syrups, cordials, dressings, leathers, pies, cobblers, and muffins, and the authors also offer updated culinary twists for old standbys such as the Native American energy food pemmican, retooled to use huckleberries or serviceberries mixed with beef jerky and nuts.
Flipping through Wild Berries of Washington and Oregon got me so revved up for summer’s bounty that I braved the I-90 floating bridge closure yesterday and visited some of my favorite berry patches. Stay tuned for a Wild Berry Scone recipe next week.
Fly fishermen like to joke about PhD trout and poindexter anglers crawling the banks spouting Latin. On first blush it may seem pretentious to be holding a trout rod in one hand and a magnifying glass in the other, while reeling off the taxonomic names of various species of Baetis and Pteronarcys. But the truth is, the fly fisherman who has an understanding of entomology has a cast up on the one who doesn’t.
And so it is with huckleberries. In the Pacific Northwest there are at least a dozen species of Vaccinium, and it pays to recognize them all. There are early fruiting huckleberries (the red huckleberry, Vaccinium parvifolium) and late fruiting huckleberries (evergreen huckleberry, Vaccinium ovatum); there are tart, bright blue huckleberries that make good jam (Vaccinium ovalifolium) and nearly black huckleberries (Vaccinium membranaceum) that taste great right off the vine. There’s a huckleberry that colonizes wetter habitats (Vaccinium deliciosum) and one that can be found high in the mountains (Vaccinium caespitosum). Read this post for more tips on huckleberrying.
The other day I visited my patch of Vaccinium membranceum. This is the main species picked and sold commercially. It’s big, which makes for faster picking, and sweet. It goes by various common names including thin-leaf huckleberry, globe huckleberry, and mountain black. This is a decent year for V. membranaceum and I would encourage my readers in the Greater Pacific Northwest to search it out. Right now! It’s common in the mountains of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana, and British Columbia, with more localized populations south to California and east to the Upper Great Lakes.
We freeze as many huckleberries as we can pick, and eat them year-round. As I say in Fat of the Land, huckleberries are a baker’s wet dream. The balance between sweet and tart is ideal for pastries, and they make the best pies, cobblers, crisps, and tarts.
But we’re not the only members of Mammalia with a sweet tooth for Vaccinium and its allies. Ursus americanus and Ursus arctos horribilis are fans, too, so be prepared to share!
Each summer we visit family in the Colorado Rockies, where it’s tradition to kick off the trip with a walk up to the same overlook, a place we dubbed the “Bear’s Lair” more than a decade ago after spooking a bear from its fern-matted day bed nearby.
The route to the Bear’s Lair follows an old hunter’s jeep track up a ridge through oak scrub and aspen glades, finally topping out on a knoll covered in spruce and lodgepole pine. Sadly, the large pines are all dead now, victims of the pine beetle epidemic that’s ravaged Colorado in recent years, and the forest doesn’t offer the same respite from the sun that it once did. But the woods are still painted in wildflowers and home to a herd of elk that moves quietly among the hidden meadows and quaking aspens. From there a quick scramble up a dry, dusty slope and over big boulders takes us to the Lair. A single Douglas fir twists out of the rocks and shades the place. We sit up there and admire the view back across the valley. Sometimes we spot golden eagles circling high in the thermals above.
I’ve hiked to the Bear’s Lair countless times in summer and snowshoed up in winter. It’s become a ritual to pay our respects here. Yet, on this trip, for the first time, I noticed a nice little patch of wild red raspberries growing from cracks in the rocks right around the base of the Lair, in perfect fruit. How had I missed these before? Could they have just gotten a foothold?
More to the point: Who doesn’t love raspberries? Sweet, tart, soft, delicate. Ruby red. I’m more familiar with the blackcap raspberry (Rubus leucodermis), which we find back at home in sunny spots on both sides of the Cascades, often in areas of disturbance such as logging clearcuts. Blackcaps are dark blue or purple and often mistaken for blackberries; the more widely known form, Rubus strigosus (or Rubus idaeus among those who consider Eurpopean and North American red raspberries to be the same species) looks very much like a typical cultivated variety, if a bit smaller. Unlike a lot of domesticated fruits and berries with wild relatives, the taste of the wild raspberry is very similar to the cultivated.
Wild raspberries seem to prefer marginal habitats and tough growing conditions. As a result, it’s a rare day when I find enough of them to make a dessert or put up for later. They’re trail food—a tasty jolt of energy while hoofing it through the wilderness. And this day was no different. We ate up all the ripe berries we could find, leaving behind plenty that would be ripe for the local bruins in a few days, taking note of this cache for future visits to the Bear’s Lair.
IN EASTERN WASHINGTON, wild Saskatoons (Amelanchier alnifolia)—aka western serviceberry, shadbush, and juneberry—grow near the extensive orchards of cherries, apples, and pears that follow the river valleys. It’s interesting to see how this free food is all but ignored.
A Saskatoon sauce is just the thing this time of year to dress up a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Or you can add some vinegar and herbs to make a savory sauce.
Remember that these berries have noticeable seeds. The seeds add a nutty dimension to the flavor, but if you’re picky about your texture, you can cook the sauce down (with more time and water) and run it through a food mill or strainer.
2 cups Saskatoon berries
1 cup water
1/4 cup sugar, or to taste
2 tbsp lemon juice
lemon zest, to taste
Bring the berries and water to boil in a sauce pan. Reduce heat and simmer for several minutes. Whisk in sugar, lemon juice, and zest. Continue to simmer and whisk until sauce is thickened to taste. Add more water if necessary.
THE FIRST DESSERT I truly loved as a kid was Apple Crisp, served in big vats at the school cafeteria. This recipe is a variation on that old standby, using pears instead of apples and goosing it with a shot of huckleberries. A shot of brandy or bourbon wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.
Topping
1 cup flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
3 tbsp brown sugar
3 tbsp white sugar
1/8 tsp cinnamon
pinch salt
6 tbsp butter
1/2 cup chopped toasted pecans or walnuts
Filling
6 pears, peeled and diced
1 cup huckleberries
1/4 cup white sugar
zest from 1 lemon
2 tbsp flour
1. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. If raw, toast pecans a few minutes in oven or skillet.
2. Stir together filling in a medium-sized bowl, adjusting sugar to taste.
3. Mix together dry topping ingredients in a medium-sized bowl: flour, oats, sugar, cinnamon, salt. Cut in butter until crumbly. Stir in nuts.
4. Pour filling into lightly greased 9-inch ramekin or pie dish. Cover with topping. Place dish on baking sheet in oven and bake 40 or more minutes until golden brown on top, with juices bubbling. Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.
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Here in the Pacific Northwest, we’re lucky to have a climate that allows for foraging year-round, even during the dark, wet days of late fall and winter. If you’re hoping to include a few wild foods in your Thanksgiving feast, keep reading…
Wild Mushrooms
By late November, those of us in Washington need to think more strategically about our mushroom hunting spots. The bread-and-butter golden chanterelle harvest is mostly done by this time, the surviving specimens oversized, floppy, and waterlogged. Skiers own the mountains now and even many low-elevation habitats should be ruled out because of recurring hard frosts. Head for the coast or the southern Olympic Peninsula and look for microclimates where fungi can persist. Search out those hardier winter species such as yellowfoot chanterelles and hedgehogs. Hint: they prefer moist, mossy forests and plenty of woody decay.
If you’re willing to travel, make tracks for southwestern Oregon where kings and matsutake are still available. My favorite this time of year, though, is the black trumpet, which is just starting to fruit and can be found in mixed forests with oak. Sautéed in a little butter, it tastes just like fall.
Shellfish
We’re coming into the high time for shellfish. The summer spawn is over and the clams, mussels, oysters, and crabs are putting meat back in their shells, rather than using their fat reserves for reproduction.
Many a Nor’westerner likes to give a regional twist to the Turkey Day dinner, including a shellfish course of soup or stew, or simply a mess of Dungeness crabs on the table to kick off the proceedings. I try to dive for my crabs when I can, though the seafood market is a dry alternative. One year I made a Dungie crab bisque for twenty. It was time-consuming peeling all that crab—I’d recommend shelling out (pardon the pun) for lump crab meat instead—but oh so decadent and delicious. Unfortunately, by the time the labor-intensive bisque was ready, I think many of us were too deep into a Northwest wine tasting to fully appreciate it.
An elegant, tomato-based shellfish stew in the Italian tradition is a great way to charm your guests and add European flair to the American meal. I make one chock full of clams, mussels, shrimp, scallops, and squid (note: Seattle’s public fishing pier is host to a multi-lingual party of midnight squidders this time of year that is not to be missed). You can find my shellfish stew recipe in Fat of the Land. Or try a simple New England-style Clam Chowder, of which I have a couple recipes, here and here. Steamed littleneck clams can be easily gathered and prepared in minutes. A splash of white with a few sprigs of parsley and couple smashed garlic cloves is all it takes, or you can add a bit more prep time for Clams with Herbed Wine Sauce. Don’t forget crusty bread for dipping.
The South Sound and Hood Canal are good options for digging littleneck clams and picking oysters, while razor clam digs on the sandy ocean beaches are a time-honored way to stock the larder. In Oregon, Tillamook and Netarts bays are popular with clam diggers. Check the state Fish & Wildlife web sites for information on beach openings and limits.
Greens
Some of our spring weeds reappear in fall with the cool weather. One of the better bets is wild watercress, which can be gathered in quantity and tastes so much better than its domesticated counterpart. Spice up your green salad with watercress, pair it with wild mushrooms in a stuffing, or make a soup or side dish with it.
Berries
We’re lucky to have a dozen varieties of huckleberry in Washington and Oregon. Our late ripening variety is the evergreen huckleberry, Vaccinium ovatum, and it’s often available right around Thanksgiving. Of all the huckleberries, it’s one of the easiest to pick, with sweet berries that can be pulled off the branches in bunches, so get your fill, though be warned: as with our fall mushrooms, this is not a good evergreen huckleberry year. Should you find some, there’s nothing better than a huckleberry pie or cobbler to put an exclamation mark on a wild Thanksgiving meal.