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 Rowan fruits also contain amygdalin glycoside, which is clearly felt in May, rowan flowers smell of bitter almonds. Amygdalin protects the body from the destructive effects of radiation and X-rays, and fats from peroxidation, contributing to the fight against atherosclerosis. The combination of amygdalin, organic acids and sorbitol has a choleretic effect, rowan bitterness and organic acids increase the secretion of gastric juice, therefore rowan fruits improve digestion.
Berries also contain pectins, which prevent excess carbon fermentation and remove excess carbon from the body, reduce gas formation in the intestines and bind toxins. In general, eat mountain ash - you will not regret it!
How can you eat it if it is bitter? There are several ways to give the mountain ash a decent taste. First, it is harvested after the first frost and then consumed with a lot of sugar. Squeeze juice from rowan berries, prepare jam, jam, candied fruit, fruit drinks and jelly. In jelly, mainly substances containing vitamin P are stored, while ascorbic acid is destroyed. Sweet and sour infusions are prepared from berries, fruit drinks, kvass, tincture, mountain ash vodka and cognac, liqueurs and even vinegar.
The second way, more productive, is to start breeding and get varieties with berries devoid of bitterness. People have been making such a selection for decades in many regions of Central Russia. The most famous result of folk selection is the Nevezhinskaya mountain ash, originating from the village of Nevezhino, Nebylovsky district, Vladimir region. Sometimes for greater euphony it is incorrectly called "Nezhinsky". In Nevezhinskaya mountain ash, the fruits are large and relatively sweet.
The professionals did not ignore the mountain ash. It was appreciated by the great Russian breeder I.V. Michurin and created several large-fruited and not bitter varieties by crossing the mountain ash with pear, hawthorn, chokeberry and medlar. Modern cultivars are obtained on the basis of Nevezhinskaya mountain ash and its Central European analogue of Moravian mountain ash. The berries of these varieties are large, up to 1.5 cm, red and so sweet that they can even be eaten fresh.
Finally, you can plant some other type of mountain ash in your garden. Elderberry, for example, has delicious sweet and sour berries without bitterness, which are easy to pick because the plant is short, no more than two meters. If you are lucky, in a temperate climate, the thermophilic mountain ash home will take root, bearing fruits the size of a paradise apple.
What products does mountain ash go with? It would be wrong to think that mountain ash is consumed only with sugar or alcohol. Sour berries are good for meat, so an original sauce is obtained from mountain ash. To prepare it, 200 g of mountain ash are boiled in syrup (half a glass of water and a tablespoon of sugar), then one tablespoon of berries is set aside, and the rest is whipped with a mixer, a teaspoon of mayonnaise and mustard is added, salt and pepper to taste, and the resulting product is sprinkled with the delayed berries ...
Another non-standard recipe is mountain ash in dough. This dish is best prepared from large varietal berries. One yolk is mixed with 100 g of flour and so much light beer is added to make a thick dough, which should stand for half an hour, and then the protein knocked down with salt is added to it. Rowan brushes, previously washed and dried, are dipped first in dough and then in oil heated to 180 ° C. Each branch is fried for 4-6 minutes, spread on a sieve or parchment and allowed to drain. Ready-made branches, so that they do not cool down, can be kept in an oven preheated to 100 ° C. Before serving, the mountain ash is sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon.
From ordinary berries harvested after the first frost, mountain ash is obtained with honey.To do this, 1 kg of berries are baked in the oven on a baking sheet, mixed with 250 g of boiling honey and boiled like jam.
What chokeberry? It belongs to the same family as the common mountain ash, but to a different genus - chokeberry. Chokeberry comes from North America, and since the beginning of the 19th century it has been cultivated as an ornamental shrub in Western Europe and southern Russia. Its fruits are sweeter and not as tart as those of rowan, although there are quite a few tannins and pectin substances in it. Another species, chokeberry Michurin, is, apparently, a polyploid form of chokeberry, and its fruits are larger.
In terms of vitamin P content (up to 0.5%), chokeberry is one of the first among Russian fruit plants. There is twice as much of this vitamin in chokeberry than in currants, and almost 20 times more than in apples.
Chokeberry juice and its fruits reduce blood pressure in hypertensive patients, and have no effect on people with normal pressure. Thanks to this useful property, chokeberry in the 50s of the last century became very popular among Russian summer residents. Over time, it turned out that the ability of chokeberry to lower blood pressure is not particularly strong, but gardeners have already managed to fall in love with this beautiful plant. In addition, chokeberry has other useful properties: its fruits and juice increase appetite and stimulate the secretion of gastric juice, therefore, it is useful for patients suffering from gastritis with low acidity.
D.P.
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