Fish with Pride:  Striped Bass By Emily Cooke, The Recipe Queen   “He’s really got one!” the father exclaimed when he saw his six year old son’s frantic expression and little arms squeezing to keep the tip of the fishing pole from dipping below the dock.  “Hand me your pole, Mikey, and I’ll put it between my legs so that fish doesn’t pull you right off the dock into the water.  Then you can reel it in.”   The first grader did as his dad asked and cranked the shaft with all the force he could muster, about half a turn at a time.  More line zipped out from the reel, the striped bass diving into deeper waters with the dead herring in its mouth.      Patiently, father and son pulled up, reeled in, lost some ground, gained some ground.  Twenty minutes later, the battle with Morone Saxatilis was done. http://www.natureserve.org/explorer/servlet/NatureServe?searchName=MORONE+SAXATILIS.  The striper flopped about inside the net.  Pride beamed the width of the dock where, father knelt and son stood, side by side, holding their 33-inch catch, a “keeper” to be sure.  A friend’s camera caught the moment of the largest live fish this six year old had ever seen, let alone landed.  Father, son, and their fishing buddies admired the blue and silver prize before cutting it into thick fillets for supper.        For recreational anglers throughout New England, this summer tale is a welcome and familiar one.  The thrill of catching one’s own fish dinner delights men, women, and children of all ages and abilities when the striped bass migrate from the Chesapeake Bay up the Atlantic coast to Maine from April to November.    Stripers (pronounced “strypahs” in New England) run in schools and have been known to nosh on herring, mackerel, sluggo fishing lures, and artificial flies.  Most anglers agree the best times to fish for striped bass is two hours either side of the tides, when they are chasing the bait fish in the Merrimack River near Newburyport, Massachusetts.   Recipe Queen is thankful to the many friends who have shared their fish catches so we can bring you some new and delicious ways to prepare striped bass.  This native North American fish even made a recent summer appearance on a July White House State dinner given in honor of the president of Poland.   Grilled Striper in Honey Dijon and White Wine Marinate   Striped Bass Provencal Style   Southeast Asian Style Striped Bass   Striped Bass Baked in Sake   Classic French Style Poached Bass   Striper Starter for White House State Dinner   Black Raspberry Joy By Emily Cooke, the RecipeQueen    While walking along a New England country road on a sunny July morning, I spied a single wild black raspberry bush, its ripe purple jewels trying to hide behind a vine of wild grape leaves and waist-high grasses. I stepped off the pavement and headed into the brush, pushing back prickers to pick the well-guarded fruit.    My baseball cap served as a handy container for the few dozen berries this Rubus occidentalis plant yielded (http://www.plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=RUOC).  Without even washing them, I popped two plump specimens into my mouth and was immediately flooded with black raspberry joy.   “A gift better than gold,” my grand Uncle Bob, then 92, said about black raspberries on a nearly identical July morning 18 years ago.  I had come to visit him and Auntie in the nursing home.  Carrying a large stainless steel bowl filled with freshly harvested black raspberries, I had found these little gems growing along a country roadside in a small town south of the Lake Erie fruit plains of Western New York.   Uncle Bob reached his quivering hand into the berry bowl and scooped up a small sample.  He ate slowly and quietly, eyes fixed upon the berries.  When he looked up at me, tears began streaming down his face.    “Did you know these are my favorite fruit in the whole world?” he asked, his broad grin stopping a teardrop. “When I was a boy we used to pick them for my mother who made delicious black raspberry pies and shortcake.”     Born in 1890, the son of a Nebraska homesteader, Uncle Bob lived in and recounted from nine decades’ worth of wonderful stories.  He had signed the guest book at Carlsbad Caverns one day after Teddy Roosevelt inked his signature.  He had heard William Jennings Bryan give the “Cross of Gold” speech.  But this summer day he spoke about the simple pleasures of wild black raspberries.    The black raspberry grows in thickets of prickly rambling shrubs.  Its habitat ranges from Minnesota to Quebec in the north, and in the southern states east of the Mississippi.  Black raspberries contain healthful antioxidants.   RecipeQueen would like to share a few generations of black raspberry recipes with you. From the 1881 Home Cook Book, Rose-Belford Publishing Company, Toronto comes the following entry:   Cottage Pudding (with Black Raspberries)   “One teacup of sugar, three tablespoons melted butter, one egg, one teacup of milk, two heaping cups of flour, one teaspoon of soda,  two of cream tartar.  If the milk be sour, leave out the cream tartar.  Bake in a pan about half an hour; add fruit if you like, it is quite an improvement.”                                                                          Here’s RecipeQueen’s translation for today’s cooks, adapted from Betty Crocker’s Picture Cookbook, published by McGraw-Hill Book Company Inc. and General Mills, Inc., copyright 1950:   Cake Base: Sift together into a bowl: 1 ½ cups Flour 1 1/2 tsp. Baking powder ½ tsp. Salt dash nutmeg   Add 1/3 cup butter ¾ cup sugar 1 large egg 2/3 cup milk 1 tsp. Vanilla   Beat with rotary beater or spoon until smooth.  Pour into greased and flour 9” square pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 20 minutes.  Cut into 3” squares.  Serve warm with hot Vanilla Sauce.  Garnish with fresh fruits.   Vanilla Sauce: Mix together in saucepan:   1 cup sugar 2 Tbsp. Cornstarch   Stir in gradually: 2 cups boiling water; boil one minute, stirring constantly Stir in: 4 Tbsp. Butter 2 tsp. Vanilla Keep hot until ready to serve.   Pour over cut pieces of cake and garnish with fresh black raspberries.      ***************** The 1907 Lowney’s Cook Book, The Walter M. Lowney Co., Boston, publisher, provides a little more precision in this recipe for Berry Shortcakes:   Black Raspberry Shortcake   Shortcake 2 cups flour                             3 tablespoons butter ½ teaspoon salt                      3 tablespoons lard 3 teaspoons baking powder    1 cup milk                                                                            Berries Two boxes of berries, washed and sweetened.  Let them stand several hours.   “Mix and sift the dry ingredients.  Add butter and lard and chop until thoroughly blended.  Add milk.  When thoroughly mixed, divide in hales; put each half into a round, buttered cake tin.  Flour hand and pat to fit the tin.  Bake ten to twelve minutes in hot oven.  Separate the upper portions from the lower portions of each cake with a fork—never cut with a knife.  Spread with butter, fill with berry filling, and arrange in layers with filling between.  Garnish top with whole berries and sweetened cream.”    *Nutritional Information:  calories per serving, vitamins, other Preservation:  Any leftovers should be stored….   ********************* The 1922 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, published by Little Brown and Company, Boston, offers a classic berry pie recipe that Uncle Bob may have eaten:   Black Raspberry Pie   “Pick over and wash one and one-half cups berries.  Stew until soft with enough water to prevent burning.  Add sugar to taste, and one-eighth teaspoon salt.  Line plate with paste, put on a rim, fill with berries (which have been cooled); arrange six strips pastry across the top, cut same width as rim; put on an upper rim.  Bake thirty minutes in moderate oven.”   Here’s RecipeQueen’s modern update:   *Nutritional Information:  calories per serving, vitamins, other Preservation:      ********************** A no-fuss Berry Charlotte is featured in the 1933 Good Cooking Made Easy and Economical by Marjorie Heseltine and Ulma M. Dow, published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York   Black Raspberry Charlotte   4 slices stale bread (1/2 inch thick) 2 tablespoons soft butter 1 pint fresh black raspberries ½ cup sugar   “Cook the berries with the sugar over low heat for about 15 minutes.  Cut the crusts from the bread and spread the slices with butter, then cut in cubes.  Place a layer in the bottom of 1 large serving dish or individual dishes.  Pout the hot berries over the bread; repeat until all are used.  Chill for 4 to 12 hours in an efficient refrigerator.  Serve cold with sweetened whipped cream.”     ************************* Skipping a few decades but adding a few calories, we find this recipe for Raspberries au Gratin in The Pillar House Cook Book by David Paul Larousse and Alan R. Gibson, published in 1988 by The Harvard Common Press, Harvard and Boston:   (Black) Raspberries au Gratin   3 large egg yolks                     ½ teaspoon vanilla extract 1/3 cup sugar                          11/2 pints black or red raspberries ½ cup milk                              brown sugar                ½ cup heavy cream                2 sprigs mint   ·         Whip the yolks and sugar until the mixture is light and slightly thickened. ·         Combine the milk, cream, and vanilla in a sauce pan, and heat to scalding.  While stirring constantly, slowly pour the milk and cream into the beaten yolks and sugar. ·         Return this mixture to the fire, stirring constantly while heating.  When the sauce is thick and creamy, remove it from the fire. ·         Preheat a broiler. ·         Divide the sauce among four ovenproof casserole dishes.  Fill the dishes with equal portions of (black) raspberries, and sprinkle brown sugar over.  ·         Under a broiler, brown the tops of the casseroles.  Garnish with mint. Wine recommendation:  Banfi Asti Spumanti (Italy)   The RecipeQueen hopes some of these recipes will bring joy to you and your family during this year’s black raspberry season.