Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/599676
6 6 | t h e c l e v e r r o o t 6 6 | t h e c l e v e r r o o t Chef Mandy Dixon of Tutka Bay Lodge prepares crabmeat beignets during a cooking lesson. Crabmeat Beignet DIRECTION Add the canola oil to an electric deep fryer or deep-sided saucepan about halfway up. Bring the oil to 350 degrees. In a heavy bottomed saucepan, combine the butter, chicken stock, and salt and bring this mixture to a boil. Remove the saucepan from the heat and add in the bread flour and- ground nutmeg. Using a sturdy wooden spoon, stir until the dough is formed and is smooth and shiny. Return the pan to the heat and stir constantly until the mixture comes away from the sides of the pan, about 2 minutes. Add in the eggs, one at a time, mixing thoroughly after each addition. Add in the grated cheese, pepper to taste, and the minced chives. Fold in the crabmeat. Drop the dough by tablespoons into a small deep fryer (or a saucepan filled half-way with oil). Remove the beignet with a slotted mesh spoon after 2-3 minutes and golden brown. Drain the beignets on paper toweling. Sprinkle with medi- um-grain sea salt and the extra Parmigiano- Reggiano. Makes 24 servings. ■cr Alaska 6 6 Alaska 6 6 | Alaska | t h e c l e v e r r o o t Alaska t h e c l e v e r r o o t Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska Alaska INGREDIENTS Canola oil for frying 6 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 cup chicken stock Pinch of salt 1 cup bread flour 1 ⁄4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg 4 eggs 3 ⁄4 cup Gruyere cheese, grated 1 ⁄4 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, grated (plus extra for dusting the finished beignets) Freshly ground pepper 1 1 ⁄2 tablespoons fresh chives 1 ⁄2 pound Alaska crabmeat Along the trail, we encounter the painful, annoying, and abundant devil's club with its nettle-like sting. But early in the spring, like the eastern nettle, it can be harvested as a flavorful salad green. Blueberries, in abundant bushes at trailside ("a bit smaller than domestic ones"), are just getting ripe. The new growth on spruce trees, the tips, are used to make spruce-flavored sugars as well as teas. There are also berries I don't recognize—the bright red watermelon berry, the salmonberry (a wild strawberry look-alike) and bunchberries, tiny and red, growing on a ground plant with a white flower that looks like dogwood. We see few mushrooms, but I am told they are abun- dant in the spring. We emerge from the forest to a beach facing a different direction and with differ- ent plant life from that we had seen earlier. Here are beach peas, much like garden peas with purple flowers; beach grass with its long, narrow leaves, salty and spicy and often boiled before serving, and shiny, small-leafed beach greens. The next day, we go along a different trail to harvest blueberries and are entertained by a nearby eagle hunting for its own fresh seafood. That evening for dinner, after a meal of scallops followed by king crab dipped in smoked egg yolk, the blueberries appear in a panna cotta for dessert. Outside, as if on cue, a steady downpour of rain begins, feeding the abundant—and quite delicious—wildlife of the Alaska rain forest. (For more information, go to www.withinthewild.com/lodges/tutka-bay/ and www.wildalaskaseafood.com).