Vaccinium vitis-idaea

The Vaccinium vitis-idaea often called lingonberry and also called cowberry (UK), foxberry, quailberry, mountain cranberry, red whortleberry, lowbush cranberry, mountain bilberry, partridgeberry (in Newfoundland and Cape Breton in Canada), and redberry (in Labrador in Canada) is a small evergreen shrub in the flowering plant family Ericaceae that bears edible fruit.

It is seldom cultivated, but the fruits are commonly collected in the wild. The native habitat is the circumboreal forests of northern Eurasia and North America, extending from temperate into subarctic climates.

Uses

Lingonberries collected in the wild are a popular fruit in northern, central and eastern Europe, notably in Scandinavia, the Baltic states, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. In some areas they can legally be picked on both public and private lands in accordance with the freedom to roam.

The berries are quite tart, so they are almost always cooked and sweetened before eating in the form of lingonberry jam, compote, juice, or syrup. The raw fruits are also frequently simply mashed with sugar, which preserves most of their nutrients and flavor and even enables storing them at room temperature (in closed but not necessarily sealed containers), but in this condition, they are best preserved frozen.

Lingonberries served this way or as compote often accompany game meats and liver dishes. In Sweden and Norway, caribou and deer steak is traditionally served with gravy and lingonberry sauce. Lingonberry preserve is commonly eaten with meatballs and potatoes in Sweden and Norway, and also with pork.

In Sweden and Russia, when sugar was still a luxury item, lingonberries were usually preserved simply by putting them whole into bottles of water. This was known as vattlingon (watered lingonberries); the procedure preserved them until next season.

This was also a home remedy against scurvy. In Russia this preserve had been known as "lingonberry water" (брусничная вода) and is a traditional soft drink. In Russian folk medicine, lingonberry water was used as a mild laxative. A traditional Finnish dish is sautéed reindeer (poronkäristys) with mashed potatoes and lingonberries, either cooked or raw with sugar.

In Finland, lingonberry-porridge is also very popular. In Poland, lingonberries are often mixed with pears to create a sauce served with poultry or game. Lingonberries can also be used to replace red currants when creating Cumberland sauce to give it a more sophisticated taste.



Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingonberry


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