The Alaska Wild Berry Cookbook. Alaska Northwest Books

      Foreword

      Nature provides us with no more delicious, nourishing, or prolific food than the berries that grow in wild abandon throughout our Northern landscape. Wild berries have been an important part of the Native American diet and tradition for centuries. Many people have formed traditions of their own with yearly outings to pick berries of all kinds, both wild and cultivated, to use in jams, jellies, preserves, and pies.

      In recent years, more and more people have become aware of the substantial health benefits from the wide varieties of berries that grow in the wild and that are available from grocery stores. Strawberries, loganberries, currants, gooseberries, lingonberries, bilberries, and more are healthful sources of vitamin C, calcium,magnesium, potassium, phytochemicals, and flavonoids.

      Wild berry picking is an enjoyable and time-honored tradition, especially in Alaska. Nearly 50 species of berries grow wild in Alaska. Most of these berries are edible, many a real treat to the taste buds. Some, however, are inedible or even poisonous. Whenever picking berries in the wild, it is a good idea to take along a reliable identification guide so that you know exactly what you are picking. When picking wild berries, or any wild plant, for consumption, avoid any that seem questionable.

      Berry picking is a wonderful family project—and so is eating the bounty. For the less adventurous, more and more wild berries and cultivated berries are available at grocery stores, farmer’s markets, food co-ops, and “u-pick’em” farms. This book presents a choice selection of over two hundred recipes that range far and beyond the usual sampling of pies, toppings, and jams. Besides desserts, you’ll find recipes for beverages, marinades and meat dishes, stuffings, candies, sauces, trail foods, and even cocktails. Also included is invaluable information on a multitude of ways to preserve berries. And if berry picking isn’t your thing, or if you live in an area where the more unusual varieties are not available, cultivated varieties can be substituted for most of the wild berries in the recipes.

      —The Editors

      About Berries

      In this volume, we have concentrated our recipes among the more abundant or more popular species of wild berries. Many berries native to other regions are similar to ours and can be used in place of the Northern fruit suggested for recipes here. Cultivated species may also be substituted for wild berries, although one must remember that they are often less tart than their wild relatives and adjustments in the sugar added may be necessary.

      The different forms of raspberries may be substituted one for the other and blueberries likewise. The red currant is a distinctive fruit, and it is probably best not to use other varieties of currants when a recipe calls for red ones. Lowbush and highbush cranberries are entirely different and require different recipes. For more information on the different types of berries, consult the glossary on page 186.

      The farther north you can collect rose hips (fruit of the rose), the more vitamin C content they will have. Rose hips are extremely useful in the North where vitamin C is so lacking and oranges so expensive! They can be used alone or with other fruit. Rose hips should definitely be harvested whenever available. There is difference of opinion about when to harvest. Some people say they should be picked just before the first frost and others prefer to pluck them after the frost.

      Many of the recipes given here are in the dessert category, but you may be surprised by how many other ways there are to use wild berries. Lowbush cranberries are particularly good in certain meat dishes and

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