Cantonese Shrimp & Winter Mushrooms

Happy year of the dragon! We celebrated earlier this week with a feast that included this classic Cantonese preparation, adding to the wok a few handfuls of wild winter mushrooms from Northern California to make it even better. Black trumpets and yellowfoot chanterelles, though not typical Asian fare, are well suited to such a dish with their slightly fruity flavors.

2 tbsp peanut oil
1 tbsp ginger, diced
1 tbsp garlic, diced
1 yellow onion, thinly sliced into half-moons
1/2 lb yellowfoot and black trumpet mushrooms, cleaned and uncut
1/2 lb Chinese leafy green (e.g. bok choy, choy sum)
1/2 lb shrimp, shelled

White Sauce
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp fish sauce
1 tsp Shaoxing wine
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp corn starch
6 tbsp chicken stock
1/4 tsp sesame oil

Mix sauce ingredients in a small bowl and set aside. Heat oil in wok over high heat. Add ginger and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add onions and garlic and stir-fry another minute before adding mushrooms. Cook together a few minutes, then add leafy greens and shrimp. When the shrimp begin to color, give sauce a stir and add to wok. Cook, stirring, until shrimp is tender. Serve immediately, then do a dragon dance.

California Is for Foragers

I dodged Seattle's Snowpacalypse 2012 for a week in NorCal, fleeing back home just as the volley of storms continued south and transformed the Chetco, Smith, and other coastal rivers into angry brown torrents. This was a "working vacation" spent gathering material for the next book, but it was also an excuse to see some of the best that the region has to offer.

In a brief week I managed to pack in three redwood hikes, including an amazing 12-mile loop through the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park that took me out to a lonely Pacific beach where my footprints were the only human presence for miles, and another in Jedediah State Park in a windy downpour that dumped lichens and branches down upon me besides the rain.

The redwoods earn all their accustomed superlatives and more. I recommend a winter visit when you can be alone among the thousand-year-old trees and contemplate the forces that bequeathed us a mere one percent of the original ancient forest. Talk about one-percenter.

I joined a wild harvester friend of mine for winter pick on the Lost Coast (pictured at top), where we gathered 25 pounds of watercress from a pristine spring, the season's first greens. (I've been eating a salubrious watercress salad pretty much every day since then.) Stinging nettles and miner's lettuce were just beginning to hit their stride at this latitude.

My friend calls the old-growth redwood forest "bad medicine," an expression he picked up from a local Indian man. If you're a mushroom picker, this is no doubt true—not much in the way of commercial mushrooms grows beneath the world's tallest trees besides the odd hedgehog here and there. On the other hand—and this is one of the great ironies of the trade—the cutover redwood forests are filled with, not surprisingly, redwood decay, and where there is decay there is fungus. Hundred-year-old stumps as big as Volkswagen bugs now fill woods mostly shaded by tanoak, madrone, and Douglas-fir. Mushrooms that prefer this decay include bellybutton hedgehogs and yellowfoot chanterelles. But even better, in this mycophagist's opinion, is a species that seems to be mycorrhizal with the deciduous trees and yet needs some of that redwood decay to really prosper: the black trumpet (Craterellus cornucopioides).

It's not a good year in NorCal for winter pick. Those weeks of high winter barometer up and down the Pacific Northwest conspired to stunt the fruiting of mushrooms. Places that one might expect to be loaded with fungi are strangely bare. It remains to be seen whether the recent storms can reverse the trend. Pickers I spoke to in the Brookings area just over the border figured that the late rain would actually put an end to their season, but farther to the south the effects may be the opposite. I can say that I found quite a few babies in one upland patch in Humboldt that will certainly be flourishing in a couple weeks.



Back home I returned to a fridge filled with half-finished stuff. Such unappreciated riches shouldn't be thought of as a burden. The dog's breakfast is perfect way to get creative in the kitchen, and sometimes you make something unexpected and delicious that becomes part of the regular repertoire. A quick inventory revealed a partially eaten package of prosciutto, two Italian sausages, a corner of parmesan, and a big yogurt container filled with an accumulation of leftover diced tomatoes. What a bonanza!

With the tomatoes I made a simple red sauce with garlic and olive oil and let this simmer for an hour, adding water occasionally as it thickened. I sliced the prosciutto (about two ounces) into strips and crumbled the sausage, browning both in a little olive oil. To this I added two huge handfuls of black trumpet mushrooms. Meanwhile I brought a pot of water to boil and add a pound of pappardelle. Just before the pasta was cooked, I added two handfuls of stemmed watercress to the meat-and-mushroom mixture and allowed it to wilt. The plated pasta got a ladleful of red sauce and a few spoonfuls of the meat-mushroom-watercress. Shavings of parm added the finishing touch.

Candy Cap Braised Pork

Most recipes for candy cap mushrooms are sweet pastries, puddings, and other desserts. Yet candy caps, with their essence of maple syrup, also demand to be paired with pig. Having made the classic baked treat à la fungi—Candy Cap Cookies—I decided to switch my experiments to something savory (though a Candy Cap Bread Pudding sounds pretty good, too).

So I went to my local meat shop and got a little more than three pounds of pork shoulder, which the butcher kindly cut into large chunks. This was a start. I wasn't sure where I was going but Indian spices seemed like a reasonable next step, and maybe some dried prunes to accentuate the sweetness of the mushrooms and perhaps a splash or two (or three) of port wine. Yes, these ingredients would work together. With a nod to typical French braising, I added carrots and onions, but the final cilantro garnish would make it clear that this was not a dish with two feet in the Western culinary canon—more like a straddling of East and West.

Here, then, is a simple recipe built around dried candy cap mushrooms that is not a dessert.

1 cup dried candy caps, rehydrated with a 1 1/2 cups warm water
3 lbs boneless pork shoulder, cut into large chunks
2 tbsp olive oil
1 yellow onion, sliced into half moons
2 - 3 carrots, sliced into rounds
1 dozen prunes
1 cup port
2 bay leaves

Rub
1 tbsp garam masala
1 tsp salt
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp turmeric

1. In a medium sized bowl, rehydrate 1 cup dried candy cap mushrooms in enough warm water to cover, about 1 1/2 cups, for 20 minutes. Remove mushrooms and wring out excess liquid back into bowl. Soak prunes in stock.

2. Meanwhile, pre-heat oven to 325 degrees. Mix together rub ingredients and apply to pork chunks. Heat olive oil in a dutch oven or casserole over medium-high flame and brown meat, in batches if necessary.

3. Remove meat and add onions and carrots. Lower heat to medium and cook several minutes, stirring, until vegetables begin to soften. Add prunes, mushrooms, bay leaves, stock, and wine. Bring to a boil and return meat to pot. Spoon some of the vegetables on top. Liquid should mostly cover the meat but not entirely. Cover and put in oven for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, stirring occasionally, until meat falls apart.

The maple syrupy mushrooms marry nicely with the Indian spices. Substitute red or white wine for the port if you prefer. The finished pork, falling apart among bright orange bobs of stewed carrot, begs for a bright green garnish of cilantro—and I might have added a dollop of Greek yogurt on top if I'd had any. Served over this couscous, the meal was perfect for a wet winter evening.

And it just got better the next day: pulled pork sandwiches!

New Classes Announced

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be returning again this year to Bainbridge Island Parks & Recreation to teach foraging classes. To see class descriptions, click here and scroll down to pages 35 -36 to "Bounty of the Land." You can also find updated class listings (plus readings, lectures, and so on)  posted in the right column of this blog near the top, under the heading "Upcoming Events & Classes."

Spring classes scheduled so far:

• March 28, Stinging Nettles: We'll divide our time between the field and the kitchen, foraging tasty and nutritious stinging nettles and then preparing a delicious recipe.
• April 7, Shellfish: Learn how to dig clams, shuck oysters, and cook a gourmet meal right on the beach.
• May 7, Shellfish: Learn how to dig clams, shuck oysters, and cook a gourmet meal right on the beach.

Additionally, I'll be offering my wild edible nature walk again this spring, an easy 3-hour ramble in a state park near Seattle. Stay tuned for dates.

Candy Cap Cookies

Ever eaten mushroom cookies? Nah, not that kind. These cookies will only give you a sugar high.

This is a post I meant to write more than a year ago, after making a trip to Mendocino at the end of November, just as the California mushroom season was hitting its stride and Washington State was nodding off for the season. Here we are little more than a year later in the same place: my home turf is only putting out a few yellowfoot chanterelles (I found some on a walk the other day, which went well with the Christmas stuffing), while to the south you might get into some late matsutake, hedgehogs, and that headliner of winter mushrooms, the black trumpet. Another coastal species to keep an eye out for: the candy cap.

Candy caps (Lactarius rubidus) are smallish gilled mushrooms that bleed a latex-like fluid when cut, a characteristic of the Lactarius genus. In the case of candy caps, the fluid is only slightly lactic, with a thin, watery skim milk consistency. The mushrooms are generally orangish to cinnamon-colored and hollow-stemmed—not exactly useful identifiers for West Coast species of Lactarius, since there are many that fit this bill, most of which you wouldn't want to eat. The best field mark I've come across involves touch. Run a finger over the pileus of a candy cap and feel a cool, slightly bumpy texture, not unlike a tangerine peel. The sweet smell is another characteristic, though not diagnostic.

I've never seen candy caps in Washington. Their strike zone seems to be the coastal mixed forests of Northern California, where I've found them among redwoods and Douglas-fir interspersed with oaks and madrones, usually in damp areas with lots of moss and decaying wood, often near forest edges, trails, and road cuts. In Mendocino, with my friend Sinclair Philip, who took the photo at left, I found good quantities fruiting near a stream in open, park-like woods behind a regional hospital.

Mushrooms, with their deep umami, are generally thought of in terms of savory dishes. A few species, notably those in the Cantharellaceae family such as chanterelles and black trumpets, exude a hint of stone fruit that is unusual in the fungal kingdom, but only rarely do mushrooms land on the dessert menu. The candy cap, as its common name suggests, is a break from this tradition. Its singular culinary attribute is most obvious after the mushroom has been dried: an aroma redolent of maple syrup.

I found enough candy caps on my 2010 trip to play around in the kitchen, but it was Nate Segraves at the Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz who kindly set me up with a mason jar full of dried candy caps to do some serious experimentation. For the usual reasons, that experimentation didn't find a vent until this past week. My first attempt was a simple cookie recipe from David Arora's All that the Rain Promises, a classic way to use candy caps (recipe below).

I've also enjoyed the candy cap in a martini served by chef Chris Czarnecki at the Joel Palmer House while dining with his father, Jack. And I plan to use my candy cap stock to make a sauce at some point soon, maybe with slow-cooked pork shoulder. A quick word to the wise, though: my own experience suggests that you should try to use your dried candy caps within a year; unlike dried morels or porcini, which only get better with age, candy caps seem to lose some of their maple syrupy kick over time.

Back to the confections. This is a basic refrigerator cookie recipe that's goosed with candy caps—a good way to showcase the unusual flavor of the mushrooms. Share these with your friends and then casually mention, after they've tucked into a few, that the star ingredient is fungi.

1 cup dried candy cap mushrooms
1 cup butter, softened, plus extra for sauté
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour, sifted
1/2 cup toasted pecans, chopped

1. Rehydrate dried mushrooms for 20 minutes in enough warm water to cover. Wring out excess liquid, pat dry with paper towel, chop, and sauté several minutes with a nob of butter over medium heat. Save stock for another use.

2. Cream together butter and sugar. Beat in egg and vanilla. Slowly add flour while stirring, then chopped nuts and sautéed candy caps.

3. Roll cookie dough into three logs, each about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. I use wax paper and a sushi roller. Wrap logs in wax paper and freeze.

4. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Slice cookies about 1/4 inch thick and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8 - 10 minutes until bottoms of cookies are golden brown.

Serve to mycophobic friends with a tall glass of milk.

Loss of a Friend

My friend Christina Choi passed away yesterday.

Christina was a nurturing soul who loved to feed people with her food, warmth, and good spirit. During its brief run, her restaurant Nettletown in Seattle developed a devoted following and probably offered the highest ratio of wild to conventional food of any regularly operating restaurant in the country. To eat at Nettletown was to know exactly what was growing wild at that very moment somewhere in the mountains, woods, or river valleys just beyond the city. This was one of the reasons why you had to be back next week—there was always something new coming into season, prepared in an unfussy way that allowed the ingredient's singular qualities to shine.

Another reason was Christina herself. The kitchen couldn't contain her. She needed to come out and visit with her customers—and we needed to bask in her glowing presence.

One time I brought a class of high schoolers to Nettletown. All week we had been foraging for wild foods as part of a week-long experiential course, in the Cascades, along the shore, even in a Seattle park. Our visit to Nettletown was a reward of sorts for the effort the students had put into the class and also a reminder of how food brings people together. Christina looked tired to me that day and I was worried about her. The hurly-burly of the restaurant business seemed to be taking a toll. Nevertheless, she rose to the occasion, coming out of her busy kitchen to spend time with the kids. She talked passionately about the various wild foods on the menu and where they came from, their high nutritious value and unique flavors. Afterward, on the bus ride back to school, several of the students told me how much of an impression Christina had made on them. "She's rad," one tenth grader said—high praise.

I usually visited Nettletown with my notebook and camera. My plan was to write a comprehensive post about this unlikely restaurant and its food over the course of a year's seasons, highlighting many of my favorite dishes. But just as soon as the experiment had begun, it was over. The restaurant closed at the end of August this year. In some ways I wasn't surprised. When I asked Christina about it, she said she was exhausted and needed to take care of her health. Like her cooking, she was direct, honest, and true to herself.

After months of not feeling like her usual self, Christina finally saw a neurologist. On December 12 she was diagnosed with a 5-cm brain aneurysm and went into surgery two days later. As feared, the aneurysm burst during surgery, and more complications followed. She died on December 28 while surrounded by the love of her family. She was 34.

We will miss you, Christina, the many of us who you nurtured with your food and kindness.

Truffle Time

The holiday season isn't just about turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. It's also peak time for truffles. And few foods can make us swoon like these odd fungal tubers. Properly prepared, they might be the sexiest of all our ingredients, evoking even more intense longing than oysters or chocolate. But how many people in this country, even food-obsessed people, can say they've had a mind-blowing truffle experience? Part of the problem is that we don't have a truffle culture here in the U.S. comparable to the truffle cultures of France or Italy. Home cooks don't know how to shop for truffles or how to prepare them—and, sadly, neither do many restaurateurs, for that matter.

Next month I plan to attend the Oregon Truffle Festival, ground zero for the emerging homegrown truffle culture. The festival is in its seventh year and will feature an assortment of events, from meals and cooking demos to a forum for would-be truffle farmers. My friend Jack Czarnecki will be cooking up some serious truffle fare with his son Chris, chef-owner of Willamette Valley's famed Joel Palmer House. Other luminaries include Jim Trappe, one of the authors of the Field Guide to North American Truffles, Molly O'Neil, the former New York Times food columnist, and numerous guest chefs, including Josh Feathers of Tennessee's Blackberry Farm and  Robin Jackson of the Sooke Harbour House in Sooke, B.C., among others. There's even a truffle dog-training seminar.

Oregon truffle country is also wine country

A quick primer: truffles are ectomycorrhizal fungi that partner with certain species of trees (Douglas-firs for the edible varieties in the Pacific Northwest) in mutually beneficial relationships that involve the exchange of nutrients and water. The truffle's reproductive strategy is to produce a scent irresistible to certain mammals (e.g., voles, flying squirrels...and humans) that will hungrily dig up the truffle, eat it, and spread its spores.

Describing truffles is no easy task. They're not much to look at. But, oh, that aroma... It's musky, sometimes fruity or garlicky, always earthy and, for lack of a better word, funky. Some would say it's an aroma more appropriate to a honeymoon suite than a dining room table.

For those who want to forage their own, I'd recommend training your dog. I've foraged truffles with and without dogs and can report that my success rate went up exponentially with the hound. Sniffing out truffles is no problem for canine smellers, and generally the truffles will be of better quality, which is to say, riper.

Jack Czarnecki with fresh truffles

And therein lies the main problem facing our native truffle industry: too many unripe truffles are being foraged and sold to consumers who don't know any better. Case in point: A friend of mine bought a local black truffle at a Seattle market the other day and showed it to me proudly. She had big plans for the truffle. I took a whiff. Nothing. The truffle had absolutely no aroma whatsoever. "Take it back and demand a refund," I told her. She was crestfallen, her dinner plans thwarted.

Be sure to examine your truffle before buying. It should be dry, firm, and pungent. Black truffles, to my nose, smell fruity, somewhat like overripe pineapple, with a distinctly fungal underpinning that is strange and beguiling. White truffles are more garlicky and can pack a wallop. Like other complex foods (e.g., wine, chocolate), the taste and aroma will vary for individual palates. Some people go to pieces in the presence of truffles, while others wonder why the fuss.

Once your truffle is conveyed safely home you'll need to take precautions in serving it. Slice it thinly over hot food. A little goes a long way. Simply shaved over buttered pasta is a classic way to enjoy the singular essence of truffles. The heat of the pasta reacts with the truffle and the fat in the butter serves to absorb the flavor. Prolonged cooking, on the other hand, will destroy the delicate molecular design of its scent. I don't understand recipes that call for inserting slivers of truffle in a piece of meat before roasting. The cooking process will likely obliterate the truffle flavor—but perhaps there are ways to pull off such a feat. I'll be sure to report back on what I learn about cooking with truffles at the Oregon Truffle Festival.

Eat Your Weedies

Is wild food the new pork belly? My Google alert for "foraging" dings nearly every day with a fresh article on the joys of finding and cooking wild edibles. The New Yorker jumped on the bandwagon recently in their annual food issue with a piece by Jane Kramer in which she forages her way across Europe. The last 18 months have seen the publication of foraging guide books by my pal Hank Shaw with Hunt, Gather, Cook (reviewed here) and Sam Thayer's Nature's Garden (reviewed here); a memoir, The Feast Nearby, by Robin Mather; and Connie Green's cookbook The Wild Table.

Is any of this ink actually getting people into the outdoors to interact with their landscape and maybe find a bit of dinner? It's hard to know. There's a learning curve, after all, which is a hurdle in an era of instant gratification and short attention spans. Certainly there is no single resource that can put you on the trail to wild harvesting. Some of the books out there, such as Thayer's, are broad field guides that will only be partly useful in any given region; others, such as Shaw's, are part field guide and part inspiration to give you a kick in the pants;  the recipe books mostly work in the kitchen; and the memoirs are strictly food for thought.

Would-be foragers who I've met over the years seem most intimidated by issues of identification and processing. Enter John Kallas and his new "Wild Food Adventure Series." His first volume in what  promises to be a collection of related titles is Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods from Dirt to Plate. Newbies looking for a single resource to get started will be well served by this jam-packed book. It's extremely detailed yet limited in scope. The book only covers a handful of plant species that are common throughout most of North America. More advanced foragers might be put off (only 20 species?) but beginners will be thankful for the depth that replaces breadth.

Kallas spotlights those ubiquitous globetrotting wild edibles common to backyard, field margin, abandoned lot, and even sidewalk crack: the weeds. And not even all the usual weeds. Stinging nettles, for instance, don't make the cut. Kallas does cover other common weeds, from lambsquarters (called wild spinach here) to purslane, and wintercress to shepherd's purse. These are truly omnipresent plants that should be on every forager's menu. Many of these species will be familiar right away while others might trigger a memory of this or that unidentified weed that landed in your compost. Thumbing through these pages you might have the sudden realization that the giant spiny thing growing from your neighbor's planting strip is a sow thistle—a highly nutritious plant that, when "managed appropriately," can be used in any preparation calling for collard greens.

Edible Wild Plants is divided into four categories that set expectations for taste: mild foundation greens (e.g., chickweed, mallow), tart greens (docks and sorrels), pungent greens (mustards), and bitter greens (dandelions, nipplewort). Entries for each species are detailed, including notes on identification, nutrition, and lifecycle. There are sub-sections for the different anatomical parts of the plant at various stages of life cycle: roots, sprouts, leaves, stems, buds, flowers, and seeds. Each stage of growth is described. Photos accompany all these stages and parts. There are additional sections on harvesting, processing, and cooking, with recipes. The entry on field mustard, for example, is more than 20 pages and includes instructions on harvesting both the vegetable-like flower buds and the seeds used for making the condiment mustard. There are even range maps.

I'm often asked about the sustainability of foraging. Obviously, if everyone went clamming tomorrow, the shellfish beds would be quickly depleted. But weeds are another story. The planet would be no worse off today if every American harvested weeds for the table this past Thanksgiving. This makes Kallas's introductory guide book a healthy addition to any forager's library.

Winter Mushrooms

It's not officially winter yet but we had a hard frost in Seattle the other morning and I-90 was closed at Snoqualmie Pass due to heavy snowfall. Most mushroom hunters figure, "Put a fork in the season. It's done."

Not so. This is the time of year to find cold-loving species such as hedgehogs and winter chanterelles (aka yellowfoot). Look for them in wet coastal woods where there's plenty of decay.

Recently I went picking with a friend on the Olympic Peninsula. Though not an epic year for late-season mushrooms (or any mushrooms, for that matter), we found decent numbers of bellybutton hedgehogs (Hydnum umbilicatum, pictured above and left) and spreader hedgehogs (Hydnum repandum). They're easily told apart. The bellybuttons are smaller, with proportionally longer stems and an "inny" of a bellybutton at the center of the cap, technically referred to as umbilicate. The spreaders can be much larger, with caps that develop scales or cracks. Both are delicious, with spicy hints of black pepper, nutmeg, and cardamon. Being fairly cold-tolerant, they'll last a long time in your fridge, too, often more than a week.

Yellowfoot chanterelles (above), also known as winter chanterelles, are not actually in the chanterelle genus; rather, they're considered a species of Craterellus, the same genus as black trumpets, and like that mushroom, they too are hollow, though with chanterelle-like ridges underneath the cap. In the Pacific Northwest our species is currently called Craterellus tubaeformis but may be changed to C. neotubaeformis as it appears to differ from the species found in the Eastern U.S. and Europe. Either way, yellowfoots have good chanterelle-like flavor despite their insubstantial size, and when they're on, you can pick them by the handful.

Recently I made two appetizer dishes with winter mushrooms. One was a crostini with yellowfoot and chicken liver. The other was a very rich and savory mushroom parfait of sautéed hedgehogs and yellowfoot with wheat berries and mascarpone.

The crostini was inspired by a meal I had at Jeremy Faber's house. Jeremy is the owner of Foraged and Found Edibles in Seattle and I think he served this dish because I had been bad-mouthing yellowfoots as soggy, tasteless chanterelle wannabes. He showed me that with the right approach, you can actually get a lot of flavor out of them, and despite the flimsy, wet noodle posture, they have good texture when properly cooked.

Brown a small handful of chicken liver in vegetable oil. Remove from the pan and crumble with the help of a potato masher. In the same pan, sauté a few big handfuls of whole yellowfoot mushrooms and deglaze with a healthy splash of soy sauce. Cook the mushrooms down in the soy until they release all their water and they're brown. They'll look almost like weird, squid-like tentacles. No need to add salt because the soy will be plenty salty; in fact, you might want to use a low-sodium variety. Mix back in the crumbled liver and serve over sliced and toasted baguette with a sprinkling of chopped parsley. The result is a serious umami bomb.

For the parfait, first prepare the wheat berries on the stove top. No matter how long you cook them they'll retain an al dente texture. I used three cups of chicken stock for a cup of berries and simmered in excess of an hour. This was much more than I needed. Next sauté a half-pound of chopped hedgehog and yellowfoot mushrooms in butter with a generous variety of chopped herbs (I used thyme, sage, and oregano). Season to taste. Remove to a bowl and mix in a few dollops of mascarpone. The mixture should be super creamy. Now mix in enough wheat berries so that the ratio is about 3:1 in favor of mushrooms. Serve in goblets with a sprinkling of chives on top.

The season's not over for those of us north of Oregon. Get out there and find some mushrooms.

Huckleberry Egg Custard

The other day while mushroom hunting out on the Olympic Peninsula, I came across some huckleberry patches that were absolutely loaded with ripe berries. My daughter is a huckleberry fanatic. She eats hucks with her pancakes, in her yogurt, over ice cream. Score!

I surprised Ruby with my huckleberry haul when she got home from school. We made egg custards for dessert and topped them with the fresh hucks. To be honest, I had never actually made an egg custard before, but after eating one of Donald Link's creamy, southern-style custards this summer while he was visiting Seattle for his "Taste of Place" webcast, I knew I wanted to add this simple dessert to the repertoire.

For that custard, Chef Donald used red huckleberries we picked together in the Cascades foothills in the middle of summer. Here it was nearly the end of mushroom season and we were still able to forage fresh huckleberries. This is a good example of why it's useful to recognize a variety of species in any particular genus. In Washington State we have 13 species of Vaccinium. Those in the know can pick ripe huckleberries as early as July and as late as December.

The evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum) is an important species for us West Coasters. It's a lowland coastal variety, and it's usually the last of the huckleberries to fruit, often when other species are covered in snow. Clearcuts are a good place to find them, and anywhere else where they can get ample sun. They fruit in clusters, which means the picking is faster than it is with red huckleberries or mountain varieties. Some pickers use a bucket and simply shake the huckleberries off the branch.

More than likely, when you get your evergreen huckleberries home you'll also have a potpourri of twigs, leaves, and maybe a spider or two. The easiest way to clean your berries is to place them on a tray in batches, angle the tray slightly downward toward a colander, and start massaging the berries with the open palm of your hand. Roll them around so they part with their stems. Clean berries will roll down the tray and collect in the colander. Smashed berries, stems, and forest debris will remain on the tray.

The egg custard itself is simple as can be.

1 cup evaporated milk
1 cup water
4 egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup huckleberries
fresh nutmeg or cinnamon, grated to taste

1. Pre-heat over to 325 degrees. Combine milk and water in a small saucepan and bring to boil.

2. Mix egg yolks, sugar, salt, and vanilla together in a bowl.

3. Slowly whisk in hot milk-water mixture until frothy. Pour into 4 ramekins.

4. Place ramekins in an oven-proof dish or tray filled with warm water. Bake for 40 minutes. Carefully place a small handful of huckleberries atop each custard and bake another 10 minutes. Test one for doneness with a knife tip; if it comes away clean, the custard is done. Sprinkle with fresh nutmeg or cinnamon. Serve hot or cold.