WRITTEN BY GREG ATKINSON

	PHOTOS COURTESY OF KNOPF
	Clockwise from top left: blackberries, Oregon grape, strawberries and Mountain Ash.

Hibler's first book, "Dungeness Crabs and Blackberry Cobblers," was a roundup of all the dishes that characterize the Pacific Northwest food scene, released in 1991 as part of the Knopf Cooks America series. No sooner had she turned in the manuscript for the best-selling "Crabs and Cobblers" than Hibler went to work on a proposal for a book about berries, submitting the idea to her editor at Knopf, the legendary Judith Jones.
 
"Judith said no," recalls Hibler. "She said she had seen too many cookbook authors put out a second book right on the heels of their first book, and she advised me to wait. So I put all my ideas about a berry book on the shelf and got on with my life." But Hibler did not stop writing. She went on to publish articles for Gourmet, Food & Wine and Bon Appétit. Then, in 1999, she put out a second cookbook, "Wild About Game," which picked up a James Beard Award for Best Cookbook: Single Subject. And in 2000, she served as president of the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

"All the time," she says. "I couldn't stop thinking about berries." And anyone who gets ahold of Hibler's latest book, "The Berry Bible" (William Morrow, $29.95) is going to spend some time thinking about berries, too. In the encyclopedic first section of the book, some 41 different cultivars — that's shorthand for cultivated varieties — are explored in considerable depth. Common names, scientific classifications, habitats, histories and tips on how to pick, buy, store and cook each type of berry serve as an exhaustive introduction to a collection of 175 recipes.
 

	Grilled Paprika Chicken with Blackberry Sauce Recent recipes in Pacific Northwest Salsa Fresca and Everyday Salsa Tender Greens with Roasted Grapes, Walnuts and Chevre

One cannot help but be glad that Hibler waited as long as she did to complete her treatise on berries. The years between conception and completion provided a wealth of experience that enriches the book no end. Hibler traveled from the berry-rich Willamette Valley near her home to central Mexico, where she learned to make aqua fresca and horchata, to Washington County, Maine, where she explored the art of Wild Blueberry Gâteau.

"I relished the beauty of Massachusetts' brilliant, crimson-colored cranberry bogs during harvest, and I picked wild blueberries in Tangle Lakes, Alaska, with Aggie Bostrom, an Inuit Indian," writes Hibler in the introduction. She went to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where she learned everything there is to know about Juneberries. She ate strawberries from the Ardéche in France. All this research paid off. From familiar and friendly strawberries, blueberries and blackberries to the rare and peculiar arbutus and seabuckthorn, all the berries are presented in four-color photographs as well. It would have been a more-user-friendly book if the photographs were near the encyclopedia entries, but the background information is useful and compelling nonetheless; I, for one, needed to know that those elderberries I've been eyeballing really are edible, and I am happy to see the delectable salal berry given equal time in a cookbook.

But the real crux of the book is the recipe collection. As Joseph Conrad, who is quoted on the front page of the book, once said, "The intention of every other piece of prose may be discussed and even mistrusted; but the purpose of a cookery book is one and unmistakable. Its object can conceivably be no other than to increase the happiness of mankind."