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Montana Fare
Huckleberry & Gourmet Mushroom Hunting
Huckleberry is a name used in North America for several plants in the family Ericaceae. It is the state fruit of Idaho. The name ' huckleberry ' is a North American corruption of the English dialectal name variously ' hurtleberry ' or ' whortleberry ' for the bilberry. In North America the name was applied to a confusing range of different plants all bearing small, a The berries are small and round, about the size of a commercially grown blueberry, but sometimes bigger depending on rain conditions in the early spring. The berries range in color from a purple red, to a dark purple and deep blues. They are tart in taste and grow on low shrubs on the sides of mountains. The greatest hazard associated with picking huckleberries is the chance of sharing a plot with a grizzly bear. They are territorial when it comes to sharing their berries.
Huckleberries in archaic American English slang were used as a way of referring to something small, in an affectionate way. The phrase " a huckleberry over my persimmon " was used to mean " a bit beyond my abilities ". " I ' m your huckleberry " is a way of saying that one is just the right person for a given job.
In Western Montana huckleberries are big business. A gallon of the beautiful berries can bring forty-dollars. Often folks buy them from roadside vendors and throw then into the freezer for winter enjoyment. In 1974 I picked and sold huckleberries in the Yaak, located in northwestern Montana near Idaho and Canada. While living in the Yaak, a local woman gave me a recipe for a huckleberry pie which I still use to this day. I particularly like this recipe because it mixes fresh and cooked berries. Wendy ' s Huckleberry Pie Recipe 2 cups fresh huckleberries, cleaned and washed. 2 cups huckleberries, cleaned and washed, and in the pot with a little water. Add a cup of sugar and cook them for ten minutes or less, add 2 tbsp of cornstarch and thicken. Pull from the stove. When cool add the 2 cups of fresh huckleberries, and then pour it into a baked pie shell. Top with whip cream!
While living in the Yaak, I was also introduced to morchella, a genus of edible mushrooms which are distinct for their honeycomb appearance in the upper portion is composed of a network of ridges with pits between them. The ascocarps are prized by gourmet cooks, particularly for French cuisine. Commercially morels are another valuable wild crafting item. Whether sold at road side markets or dried and sold over the internet, these are very popular everywhere, most folks go out and seek their own supply every year. Searching for morels is fun because it means you take a walk in the woods.
Merkels or miracles, as morels have been called are based on a story of how a mountain family was saved from starvation by eating them in Kentucky. In parts of West Virginia, they are known as " molly moochers." Other common names for morels include sponge mushroom. Genus Morchella is derived from morchel, an old German word for mushroom, while morel itself is derived from the Latin maurus meaning brown.
The fruit bodies of the Morchella exhibit variations in shape, color and size; this has contributed to uncertainties regarding taxonomy. Discriminating between the various species is complicated by uncertainty regarding which species are truly biologically distinct. Some authors suggest that the genus only contains as few as 3 to 6 species, while others place up to 50 species in the genus. Mushroom hunters refer to them by their color( e. g., gray, yellow, black) as the species are very similar in appearance and vary considerably within species and age of individual. The best known morels are the " yellow morel " the " white morel " and the " black morel."
Western Gal Speak-Life in Montana
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