Berries from around the world

Could I write an article about summer berries and not mention strawberries? Impossible.

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I discovered this cheesecake recipe and thought - that's it! This will be a cheesecake to end all cheesecakes! The recipe looked delicious, easy and foolproof, plus I was pretty sure I could create all other flavour varieties off it. I gave it a go in its basic strawberry form.

I substituted a few ingredients, i.e. used mascarpone instead of fromage frais and digestive instead of shortbread biscuits. It was OK, the cake looked gorgeous and set properly. But...

Remember, my friend, never use salted philadelphia in cheesecakes!!!

For the original recipe, see the big link below.

Photo by Tiggered

Here's one you may not have heard of before. Also known as Japanese flowering dogwood, Japanese dogwood and kousa dogwood, the plant itself doesn't really look like strawberry at all, but its fruits kinda do. It's usually bought as a decorative bush, but the fruits are totally edible. I haven't tried them yet. If you happen to have a plant, invite me in for a taster :)

Oh, and they have pretty, pretty flowers too.

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I must have been 10 years old or so before I tasted blueberries 'proper' for the first time. What a revelation it was! My parents bought a blueberry bush for our garden and ever since I was impatiently waiting for the harvest to arrive. I'm not alone in this impatience - in US blueberries are second to strawberries only when it comes to fruit popularity. The extraordinarily high content of antioxidants in a blueberry means that this fame is truly deserved

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Oh my, the taste of pure wild raspberry juice... If you've never tried it, GO FOR IT!! But to be honest, whatever you do with your raspberry, it will always taste fabulous.

Oh, and did you know that not all raspberries are red? I know it feels very unraspberry-like, but you can also get them in black, yellow and purple. Some say that yellow (or 'golden', as the romantics would have it) variety is the sweetest.

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Question: What's the difference between raspberries and blackberries if both can be black?

Answer: Raspberries have a core that stays on the bush when you pick them, and blackberry's core stays inside the fruit.

Have you noticed?

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Never has a berry been so fittingly named. The raw fruit is so astringent that you want to choke when you try to eat it. Blah, foul stuff. Believe me, I've been there, I've tried.

Aronia, as it is also known, is quite ok if you turn it into a jam, juice, pie or something like that. Anything that you will add heaps of sugar to as well.

It is also one of the most beneficient fruits you can come across. It's packed full of antioxidants and vitamin C and very few other fruits can match aronia on this field.

Unfortunately, my mum knows it too. What she didn't know when I was a child was the fact that chokeberry is considered inedible when raw (so foul is the taste). To add to my suffering, the wicked bush produced TONS of berries.

Don't repeat my mum's mistake, and don't feed chokeberries to your children before turning it into something edible. Please?

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This is one of my very favourite berries. I never ever do preserves (I may mend the error of my ways someday), but I cooked up two jars of rowanberry jelly last years because I simply couldn't resist the temptation of those beauties.

Rowanberries are thought poisonous by some, but this is completely not true. They just don't taste very well when eaten straight from the tree. But turn them into a jelly or a marmelade and you will have something truly unique.

Tip: let your rowanberries spend a week in the freezer after picking. This will remove tart taste.

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To put it simple, bilberries are wild blueberries. They grow on tiny shrubs (which wouldn't even reach your knees, unless you're four year old). They taste similar to blueberries, with their particular 'wild' twist. Gathering bilberries is usually a joyful activity, as it includes a day out in a forest and the younger you are, the bigger the likelihood of coming home with huge purple bilberry juice stains all over your clothes and body. Now THESE are hell to get rid of, so if you're going out picking, better choose clothes that you won't mind throwing away after the trip.

In my family sun dried bilberries have always been considered a valuable medicine for all sorts of gastric ailments.

They are also known as blaeberries, whortleberries, whinberries, winberries, windberries, wymberries and myrtle blueberries.

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Lingonberry (also known as cowberry or partridgeberry) is another typical 'forest berry'. To put it very, very simply, it's a red version of bilberry. Both shrubs are similar in size and grow in similar environment, their berries are the same size too (and this is where similarities end...). While bilberries are nearly black with bluish tint, lingonberries are the brightest red of holly berries around Christmas time. They also taste totally different - more tart, with very, very specific flavour that lingers on your tongue.

Lingonberries taste best when converted into jam - sugar makes the tartness go away.

Oh, and the smell of cooking lingonberry jam - heavenly.

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I don't particularly like gooseberries. That is, unless I happen to be near a gooseberry bush in the peak of gooseberry season, with the Sun shining and making the berries warm and as sweet as I can dream of. Yes, this is a proper way of eating gooseberries!

Funny thing, I haven't spotted gooseberries in Ireland even once, but I've seen gooseberry jam.

Gooseberry jam is good too.

Try it.

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This is an Australian berry. I discovered it recently and totally fell in love with its alternative name - lilli pilli. No berry anywhere has a better sounding name, full stop.

I've actually never tried it, so I won't pretend to be smart about it :)

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What would a UK Christmas or a US Thanksgiving dinner be without cranberries (I'm writing these words fully conscious of their hypocrisy as I'm neither English nor American...)? Or what would a Cosmopolitan cocktail be without cranberry juice?

Cranberries are small and rare (and hardly edible when raw), but full of character.

I wonder if that made guys from The Cranberries call their band as they did?

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Cooking with elderberries will leave you with one basic dilemma - should you wait until the berries are ripe or should you start harvesting as soon as the bush flowers? The reason being - flowers are as useful as the actual berries. Elderberry flower fritters and elderberry flower cordial have always been extremely popular with all the fans of hedgerow cuisine, so sometimes waiting for the fruit to ripen may prove tricky.

Warning: unripe fruit is toxic. Wait until your berries are completely ripened, and better still - eat only when cooked. Eating small quantities of raw, ripe elderberries shouldn't harm you, but why take the risk?

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We usually see them in dried form in health food shops - goji is another berry bursting with antioxidants, vitamin C and other beneficial ingredients. Yet, the fresh berries, particularly on a plant, are so much prettier!

Also known as wolfberries or mede berries.

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