10 Recipes With Cowberry

Autumn is generous with its gifts. Cranberry and cowberry ripens on the marsh. People call this berry borovika (borovka), burovika, brusena, brusenia, brusnichnik, serdechnik, muchinnik, etc

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Autumn is generous with its gifts. Cranberry and cowberry ripens on the marsh. People call this berry borovika (borovka), burovika, brusena, brusenia, brusnichnik, serdechnik, muchinnik, etc. It is a perennial evergreen subshrub 10-30 cm in height, with a trailing rooting rhizome up to 70 cm in length and upright branchy stems. Leaves are alternate, small, leathery, elliptic, nitid from above, matte from below. The leaf edge is a little rolled up, the bottom side has blackish dot glandules. The flowers, white with a pinkish hint, have a weak smell; there are 2 to 8 flowers in a bunch on the ends of the previous year sprigs. The fruit is a bright red berry, scarlet when ripe.
In translation from Latin the word "cowberry" means "a grapevine from Phrygian mountain Ida", where according to the legend, stayed Kibela, the goddesses of fertility who rode around in a chariot with a wreath made of various fruit and berry plants on her head. Dodoneus, a botanist from Netherlands, was the first to refer to it.
Cowberry ripens in August and September. Bright red berries contain up to 12% of sugars (glucose, fructose, succrose), up to 2-2.5% of organic acids (lemon, apple, benzoic, wine, sorrel, salicylic), pectines and tannins, anthocyan pigments, glycosides vaceinine and arbutin, up to 20 mg of% of vitamin C, carotin, and manganese.
Cowberry leaves and berries have medicinal effect. Leaves are collected in spring, in bloom period. If they are collected later, they get black at drying. They can be collected in autumn after fructification. Dry them in the shadow — under canopies, spreading thinly on a tray. The leaves are taken as a diuretic, disinfecting uric tracts. The tea made of cowberry leaves, has antiedematous effect.
Cowberry berries are eaten fresh and processed. Because of benzoic and salicylic acids with their antiseptic properties, the berries can be stored fresh for a long time. They are used to cook confectionery products, and drinks. Marinated and fermented cowberry is served as a garnish to fried game, meat and fish dishes, and added to salads. Despite low sweetness, cowberry is widely popular due to durability of berries, and original, a little bitterish flavor. It is used in confectionery industry to manufacture fillings for caramel, jams, mousses, juices, extracts, syrups, and fruit drinks.

Draniki With Soaked Cowberry

12 potatoes
1 tbsp flour
2 tbsp vegetable oil
3/4 cup sugar
20g soaked cowberry
salt to taste

Peel and grate potatoes, add flour, salt and stir all. Fry draniki in well-heated fat. Separate soaked cowberry from water, boil the cowberry water with sugar, chill, combine with cowberry and serve with draniki.

Apples Baked With Cowberry

6-8 apples
1 cup cowberry
1/2 cup sugar
for syrup:
1 cup cowberry
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups water

Rinse and core apples. Rinse cowberry, combine it with sugar, fill with it the cored apples. Put the apples filled with cowberry in a stew pan, add a little water, bake in the oven until ready. Boil syrup from the apple cores and pressed cowberry and pour it over the baked apples.

Cowberry Salad

600g cowberry
1 cup cream
2 tbsp dry white wine
powdered sugar

Berries are rather rare in early spring, but you still can find a little cowberry or cranberry to make a remarkable dessert salad. Rinse cowberries and combine them with powdered sugar, add a little hot water; bring to boil and leave in the covered saucepan to chill down. Add wine, sprinkle with the remaining powdered sugar, add cream, stir.

Vinaigrette With Cowberry

90g beef or veal
75g beef tongue
75g ham
60g potatoes
90g pickled cucumbers
60g beet
60g carrots
2 eggs
30g soaked cowberry
60g vegetable oil
15g 3% vinegar
sugar to taste
fresh herbs to taste
ground black pepper to taste
salt

Boil low-fat beef or veal and beef tongue. Remove fat from ham. Slice the meat products fine, combine with sliced boiled potatoes, beet and pickled gherkins, mix, add vegetable oil, vinegar, sugar, ground black pepper and salt. Shape the vinaigrette as a hill on a plate, and place around finely chopped boiled beet, carrots, soaked cowberry, fresh herbs. Put slices eggs on the vinaigrette hill.

Bilberry Jam On Honey

1kg cowberries
100g water
500-700g honey
a piece of ground cinnamon
2-3 cloves
1 tsp lemon candied peel

Put the prepared berries in boiling water for 2-3 minutes, then put them in a basin for jam making, add sugar and other ingredients. Boil at low heat until ready. Before finishing you can add mint leaves, linden flowers, dogrose petals.

Buns With Cowberry

/2 pack dry yeast (one 25g pack equals 100g of usual yeast), or
25g fresh yeast
1/4 cup warm milk
1 cup warm milk
1 egg
approx. 500g flour (even pancake flour will do), or a bit more
1 bag flour conditioner
6 tbsp olive or vegetable oil
sugar 1 tsp + 2 tbsp

Make the dough brew: add yeast, 1 tsp sugar and 1 tsp flour in 1/4 cup warm (but not hot!) milk, mix and leave for 10 minutes. In 10 minutes "catch" the yeast or it will "run away". Knead the dough: pour warm milk in a saucepan, add 1 egg, a pinch of sugar, salt and oil, stir, add the leavened mix, whisk thoroughly. Gradually stir in sifted flour with a conditioner, and make the dough. The dough should be light, elastic, soft and not stick to hands. Roll the dough in a ball, put in dry buttered dish, cover with a wet towel and a lid, leave to rise about 45 minutes. My dough rose almost 3 times its volume. I did not press it down, however, as I had little time, but I liked the structure.
Roll out the dough on a floured table into a rectangular. Brush it with a half of 1 a little whisked egg. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Put pre-defrozen berries on the dough. Many people think that cowberries and cranberries are very bitter. I have noticed that only cranberries are bitter after baking, while cowberries turn out very tasty with light bitterness that gives very pleasant and refreshing taste when combined with pastry and sugar. Roll the dough in a roll, slice it two fingers thick, put on a buttered baking tray, brush with egg and sprinkle with sugar or grated coconut. Bake on the medium level at 180-200 C, about 30 minutes or until an appetizing brown crust appears.

Pie With Cowberry

3 Antonovka apples
1 cup cowberry
2 tbsp honey or jam
2 tbsp vanilla sugar
ready leavened or puff dough
egg for brushing

Flour the table. Roll out dough into a circle and carefully put into a buttered fire-resistant form. The rolled dough should be a little wider than your form so that you can easily bend up the sides. Make a lot of punctures with a fork. Halve and core apples, slice them finely. Rinse cowberries and dry them a little. Brush the dough with honey or jam. Put the apple slices and cowberry as is shown in the picture. Make two grids out of the remaining dough. Put them on the pie. Bend the sides of the dough on the pie. Make leaves out of the remaining dough.
Brush the sides with egg and put the leaves on the pie, brush all the dough with egg. Sprinkle vanilla sugar on the apples and cowberry.
Heat the oven to 180 C. Bake the pie 30 to 40 minutes. When the pie is ready, cut it into portions. Serve with whipped cream or vanilla pudding.

Cabbage With Cowberry

2 onions
30g butter
750g sauerkraut
6 juniper berries
2 bay leaves
250ml white wine
2 duck breasts (250g each)
3 tbsp vegetable oil
400ml broth
125ml red wine
salt, pepper
3 tbsp sauce thickener (or starch)
2 tbsp cowberry compote

Slice the onions and brown them in butter. Add sauerkraut and stew. Add juniper berries and bay leaf. Add white wine and stew 45 minutes. Rinse the meat, make cuts from the skin side and fry in oil. Roll into cling film and put in a warm place. Add broth and red wine to the sauce on the frying pan and boil it down. Season and add sauce thickener. Add cowberry compote to the sauerkraut, boil and season. Slice the meat and serve with sauerkraut and sauce.

Ice Cream With Cowberry Sauce

250g fresh cowberry
1 orange
1 tbsp lemon juice
50g sugar
4 tbsp port
300g vanilla ice-cream

Rinse and drain cowberry. Rinse and dry orange. Grate candied peel fine, halve the orange and squeeze out juice. Put the cowberry in a pan, add candied peel and orange juice, sugar and port, boil at low heat 3 minutes without a lid. Pour the fruit sauce in dessert cups. Put ice-cream on the sauce with a scoop. If the ice-cream is served to children, replace port with water.

Estonian Cowberry

200g cowberry
100g oatmeal
100g sugar
vanilla on a knife tip
20g whipped cream

Squash cowberries with sugar and oatmeal, add vanilla, stir and serve with whipped cream.

Bon appetite!