Raspberries have the perfect clean, sweet tang for a frozen mignonette that complements the flavor of local oysters.

Saucing the oyster is an art. Be it a surreptitious squeeze of lemon juice or a classic Champagne mignonette sauce, a little hint of something tart can brighten the flavors of the shellfish as unobtrusively as a comfortable swimsuit and a towel improve a trip to the beach. Some of the more heavy-handed oyster toppings, though, are more like a cooler full of junk food, a boom box and a giant striped umbrella. They can diminish rather than enhance your enjoyment.

Doe Webb, the late wife of William Webb, who founded Westcott Bay Gourmet Shellfish Farm on San Juan Island, used to claim that no sauce could improve an oyster. "I usually don't like anything on my oysters," she told me once, "but I would like a spoonful of that citrus salsa on one, if you don't mind."

The salsa was something that grew out of a recipe I found in Roger Vergé's "Entertaining in the French Style." Vergé's "Oysters with Three Citrus Fruits" captured my imagination the moment I saw it. Originally, it was just that — segments of citrus with just a smidgen of crushed coriander seeds — but I gilded the lily with curls of zest from the citrus skins, and careful little spoons full of sugar, salt and pepper. I exchanged grapefruit for lemon. Gradually, the formula became my own, and while citrus fruits don't grow anywhere near the Northwest, I have come to think of the salsa as an irrefutable part of my brand of Northwest cooking.

Makes about 1 cup, enough for 2 dozen oysters

1/3 cup raspberries, fresh or frozen 1/3 cup raspberry vinegar 1/3 cup cold water 3 tablespoons finely chopped shallot 1 tablespoon coarsely ground black pepper 1. In a blender, purée the raspberries with the vinegar and water. Pass the purée through a strainer into a small bowl. Press down on the solids to get as much of the good stuff as you can, then discard the seeds. Stir the chopped shallot and the black pepper into the purée and put the bowl in the freezer. 2. After an hour, stir the sauce and break up any ice crystals. Put it back into the freezer until it's pretty well frozen. If the mixture has already frozen solid, break it up with a fork and stir it into a kind of slush. Serve the frozen sauce with well-chilled, just-shucked oysters on the half shell.

Serves 4

1 dozen oysters 1/4 cup water 1 cup fresh spinach leaves Muscat Sabayon (recipe follows) Freshly ground black pepper, to taste 1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Put the oysters and the water in a pot with a tight-fitting lid and cook over high heat for 10 minutes, or until most of the oysters have popped open. While the oysters are steaming, cut the spinach. Stack the spinach leaves, roll the stack into a tight bundle and cut across the bundle to make even ribbons. After the oysters are cooked, remove them from their shells and put a pinch of shredded spinach into each shell. (Save some of the shredded spinach to decorate the plate.) 2. Place each oyster back in its shell on top of the spinach and top with a generous tablespoon of sabayon. Bake for 5 minutes, or until the sabayon is just beginning to brown. Spread the reserved spinach on the serving plate and place the baked oysters on top of the spinach. Grind pepper over the oysters and serve at once.

4 egg yolks 1/2 cup sweet Muscat wine 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt A generous grind of black pepper In a heavy-bottom pan over medium-high heat, beat the egg yolks, wine, salt and pepper with a wire whisk for 2 minutes, or until light, fluffy and just beginning to set. Continue beating vigorously as long as the mixture is in the pan or the egg yolks will scramble. As soon as the sabayon has thickened into a stable foam, transfer it to a bowl and set aside. Sabayon may be used at once or refrigerated and used up to four hours later. Print friendly version.

Somewhat more indigenous is an oyster topping made with raspberries. The hint of acid in the tart berries is reminiscent of the tang of lemon, but with a mitigating bit of sweetness. In the mid-'80s, I made a French sauce mignonette with shallots, cracked pepper and vinegar, using raspberry-flavored vinegar instead of the classic white-wine vinegar. I topped each dressed oyster with a wild thimbleberry and thought myself as clever as little Jack Horner. Interestingly, cooks all over the region were doing the same thing. I don't recall ever having seen this paticucombination anywhere before I started doing it myself, nor do I suspect anyone of copying me. As some food ideas go, this one just seemed to be picked up by the wind and spread like so many dandelion seeds.

But raspberry mignonette didn't really reach its full potential until someone thought to freeze it. I think it was Sally MacArthur who brought this frozen mignonette thing to its current state of the art. At least it was at a restaurant under her influence that I first sampled the mignonette in its frozen form. MacArthur, known both as Czarina of Seafood and director of cuisine and concept development for Consolidated Restaurants, did not make her mignonette with raspberry vinegar but with red-wine vinegar.

She says she got the idea while she was the chef on an oyster tour in France. "It comes from that very French tradition of keeping and serving oysters cold, cold, cold, with ice underneath and ice on top. But I never thought to use raspberry vinegar."

Now frozen mignonette is practically ubiquitous. Still, no one seems to be tired of it.

When oysters are served chilled on the half shell, I prefer sauces that are oil-free, tangy and bright. When oysters are cooked, they change, and the accompanying sauce must conform. Not long ago, I served steamed oysters with a glaze of apple cider enhanced with black pepper and a splash of apple-cider vinegar. The cider had been boiled down to concentrated essence, and its flavor was big and bold but simultaneously sweet and comfortable. I would never have served that sauce with a chilled oyster.

Often, when oysters are cooked, they want a little fat, a little cream perhaps, or some buttered breadcrumbs. One of my favorite ways to serve oysters hot involves finely chopped mushrooms, sautéed in butter with sherry wine and a crumbly topping of breadcrumbs and cheese. I know it sounds like this heavy casserole on the half shell would totally overwhelm the oyster; it doesn't.

Hot oysters on the half shell also hold up very well beneath a spoonful of the wonderful whipped egg yolk and sweet wine custard known as sabayon. Essentially the same thing as the Italian zabaglione, sabayon is made savory instead of sweet simply by the omission of sugar. Steam the oyster open, remove it from the shell. Put a bit of shredded spinach in the empty shell, put the oyster back, then spoon on a dollop of the sabayon sauce and pass the oyster under the broiler. Eating oysters in sabayon is like camping on the beach. The velvety sauce is like an old-fashioned sleeping bag lined with flannel that wraps the happy camper inside a cocoon under the stars.

Greg Atkinson, Canlis executive chef, is the author of "In Season" (1997) and "The Northwest Essentials Cookbook" (1999) from Sasquatch Books. Betty Udesen is a Seattle Times staff photographer.