Mulberry Cornbread on July 4th.

There is a very large Mulberry tree arching over the entrance to our town fishing pier. We noticed it this morning after an early morning kayak on the river. Its branches are heavy with ripe fruit. Most of us know the children’s song, "here we go round the Mulberry bush", however I doubt most of us have tasted a fresh mulberry fruit. They are much smaller than a raspberry and have a faint cherry like flavor and are reminiscent of crème de cassis. I am not sure if this was a white or black mulberry tree since the name refers to the color of the blossoms in spring time not the color of its fruit. The black variety is native to our area while the white variety is from central China.

I thought about this e blogger group out of California, called Forage Oakland, where you can give them directions to your home and they will harvest fruit or vegetables growing wild or going to waste on your property. I couldn’t help but think how grateful Alice Waters would have been, the original urban forager, for such a web site during her early days at Chez Panisse when she too scavenged the neighborhoods of the Berkeley-Oakland hills for wild rosemary, thyme, fennel, miner’s lettuce or apricots precariously dangling over a fence tempting her to bake them with the puff pastry dough chilling in the cooler back at the restaurant. I couldn’t resist either and picked 2 pints for my summer fruit cornmeal cake, a recipe I adapted from Martha Stewart’s new cupcake book. She always has recipes that work and reflect the current food trends across the country. Both of these 'Jersey girls' have forever changed the way Americans eat.

Now if only I could figure out how to snare one or perhaps two of the thousand bunnies running around town I could prepare a lovely rabbit terrine to go with a savory mulberry compote. Funny how seasonal ingredients always seem to pair up nicely together.


Mulberry Cornbread Cake Ingredients
1 ¼ C. all purpose organic flour
½ C. organic cornmeal
2 t. baking powder
1 t. salt
¾ C. sugar
½ C. buttermilk @ room temp
2 lg. eggs @room temp
1 t. vanilla
1 stick butter (8 T.) melted & @ room temp

12 oz. clean fresh mulberries
2-3 T. coarse granular sugar

Simply combine all the dry ingredients in one bowl and all the wet in another. Add wet to dry. Do not over mix. Any cake or tart pan will do. Generously sprinkle fruit on top then sugar. Bake in a preheated oven, 375 degrees for about 25 minutes.