Desert Strawberries

I was surprised to see true local strawberries, the kind we get for a brief few weeks in June in Little Compton, at the farmer’s market a few weeks ago. Since commercial strawberries have gone the way of tomatoes in recent years—giant mutants, red outside and all white and fibrous within, tasteless, mealy—I really don’t eat them except when they are local and just-picked. This is another way of saying I only eat the real deal. No fake fruit for me.

The berries were from Yuma, of western movie fame. You may remember from seeing either the old or the new version of 3:10 to Yuma (both very good) that the sun is pretty steady there, to say the least: Yuma describes itself, apparently with accuracy, as having “more sunshine than any city on earth.” Strawberries like that. These were fragrant and juicy, and red right through, as a strawberry should be. I’ve always thought that strawberries needed a little cool moisture to set right, so maybe the fact that Yuma is on the Colorado River—yes, rivers do run through deserts—provides just enough to do the trick. Or the farmers irrigate. Whatever, these berries were delicious.

And they were cheap: a nostalgic, like the berries themselves, $2.50 a pint. Had I not been on my way out of town, I would have bought tons and made jam and shortcake . I bought only two pints, promptly ate one out of hand, dipping a few in heavy cream and demerara sugar, and, after briefly considering marinating them for one of my favorite quick desserts, pureed and froze the other. It is all relative, but even here in AZ, we have a kind of winter. There are few more hopeful reminders that spring will come again than taking something berryish from the freezer on a cold winter night. The taste of summer is always something to look forward to.

Strawberries Are In—and They Are Fine!

I had heard all about the brutal winter and soggy spring this year, and I thought, oh no, not another growing season (or lack thereof) like 2009. So I was really surprised when, driving right past the fruit lady on my way into Little Compton because I wasn’t expecting anything¸ I glimpsed little boxes of red in my rear-view mirror. I was too tired from traveling to turn around, but when I got to Walker’s I pulled in, hoping for lettuce. There was beautiful lettuce—more about that later—but also strawberries. Walker’s own: he used to buy them from others and they were always priced too high, but apparently has decided to add some fruit to his largely vegetable-focused farm. $3.50 a pint, and gorgeous.
The modern commercial strawberry has a lot in common with the modern commercial tomato: it’s huge and red. And also tasteless, pulpy, all-core-and-no-flesh inside, fragrance-free, and generally inedible. It has a half-life of about a zillion years. It is just a red, strawberry-shaped mutant, best relegated to a centerpiece or the decorating of hats. I never buy them. And certainly don’t eat them. Just like commercial tomatoes.
So is it too much to say that this year’s strawberries are iconic? Red right through, natch. Virtually core-less. Perfectly shiny-ripe. Naturally sweet. Strawberry-scented. Juicy. Juicy enough for—strawberry shortcake.
I know I’ve made it for the blog before. But this has a few little twists, so I hope you’ll forgive the repeat. The strawberries are worth an encore.

Strawberry Shortcake with Cheese Biscuits
I had some store cheese, so decided to make cheese biscuits to pair with the berries for a kind of sweet-salty match. Serves 4.

1 ½ c flour
½ tea salt
1 T sugar
1 T b.p.
5 T cold, unsalted butter
½ c whole milk
½ c grated store cheese

1 pt local strawberries
sugar
1 cup light cream or heavy cream, preferably unhomogenized
½ tea vanilla
2 tea superfine sugar
Mint for garnish (optional)
Preheat the oven to 350F. Sift the flour, salt, sugar, and b.p. Cut in the butter with a knife or your fingers until crumbly; do not overwork. Add the milk, blending with a fork or your hands until the dough just is almost together; add the cheese and blend until it is together but still rough; again, do not overwork. Dust the counter with flour and turn out the dough, patting and lightly folding it until it holds together, then pat it into a uniform rectangle about 1 ½” thick. Cut out biscuits with a 3” cookie cutter or glass. Gather the scraps, pat them together, and cut them out as well.
Place the biscuits on a baking sheet and let rest for about ½ hr. Brush lightly with cream or milk. Sprinkle with a little additional grated cheese. Bake 15 minutes, or until golden and crisp on the outside. Cool on a rack. I usually get about 5 high biscuits from this amount of dough, and eat one soon after they are done.
Hull and slice the strawberries into a bowl; add sugar to taste to draw out the juices and let sit for about 10 minutes.
In part because of the richness of the biscuit, these shortcakes are served a little differently—instead of with whipped cream, I pour lightly sweetened cream over it, as you know I often do with fruit desserts. You of course can whip your cream if you want, but don’t make it too sweet. Use light or heavy cream, mix it with a small amount of superfine sugar (2 teaspoons) and a little vanilla; just warm it a bit to help the sugar dissolve.
Split the biscuits, spoon some berries with their juices over the bottom halves; cover with the tops and more berries, then pour the cream generously over all. Garnish with the mint and serve.  By the way, these biscuits freeze very well. A light toasting brings them back to nearly as good as fresh out of the oven.

                                                                

Surprise! Strawberries

I wasn’t really expecting them. Not yet. It wasn’t just that it had been so cold and rainy for so long, although that was a big part of it. It was more that it was only the first days of June. It seemed so early. But there they were, along with that other eagerly awaited assurance, beautiful and flavorful lettuce, that the summer growing season is, after all, coming to come again this year: strawberries. Surprise!

Of course, they are not cheap. Yet. Maybe never this year unless it stops raining and warms up some more. But at $5.50 a quart, worth every penny.

Not that you’re going to make a kettle full of preserves at this price. For that, we’ll wait to see what happens with the weather and the crop—meaning, to see if the price of that quart drops to $3.00 like, happily, last year. Or even $4.00. For now, there are other delights for a single quart, including that essential for the first-of-season, eating them out-of-hand. The old standby, strawberry shortcake. Strawberry ice cream, should we get the elusive hot day (we can dream, can’t we?). Or something as simple as a strawberry syrup for plain vanilla ice cream or pound cake, or an intense strawberry butter for slathering on biscuits or thick white toast, both started by simply pushing ripe strawberries through a sieve. Biscuits and strawberry butter are, in fact, just a deconstructed version of strawberry shortcake, a variation on the theme of simple biscuit dough, fruit, and cream—in this case churned beyond the whipping stage to fresh unsalted butter. It makes for a nice, quick, springtime breakfast or afternoon treat with lemonade or iced tea.

But confronted with strawberries and lettuce, an embarrassment of June riches, what else is there to do but join them—it is June, after all—in wholly flavorful matrimony. Sitting down to these first gifts of summer is as sentimental and life affirming as eating cake at a June wedding—preferably one held, and eaten, out on a Little Compton lawn. Pour the champagne, and say a toast to a new beginning. Summer, or life. They’re both the same.

Red June Wedding Salad

This is very pretty, and very good. I like to use the Boston red leaf lettuce from Coll Walker’s farm to complement the intensely pink strawberry dressing. Serves 4.

3 T extra-virgin olive oil, preferably organic, unfiltered (see Note)
1 T half-and-half or light cream
3 medium-large strawberries, trimmed of stems and crown
½ tea aged balsamic vinegar (see Note)
½ tea white balsamic vinegar (see Note)
¼ tea salt
6-8 twists of the pepper mill

1 head red Boston lettuce or other red leaf lettuce, washed and dried

In a small bowl. whisk the cream into the olive oil with a small whisk until combined. Slice the strawberries in half or quarters; you should not need to core them, as those awful white cores are virtually nonexistent in local berries, which are, deliciously, red right through. Using your little whisk, press down on the berries—local berries are soft—and whisk them into the oil/cream mixture until they have almost disappeared, turning the mixture an intense pink with a few flecks of red. If you want bigger pieces of berry in your dressing, stop when it is as you like. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Tear the lettuce into big pieces and place in a bowl. Pour about half the dressing in and toss; add more dressing gradually until the lettuce is nicely coated, with little red bits clinging to the leaves, but not saturated. The dressing will keep well in the refrigerator for several days; it will thicken, but may be used as is, or thin it a little by whisking in a few drops of warm water.

Note: Both organic olive oil and old balsamic are quite viscous—my balsamic, brought back from a trip to Italy, is like a thick syrup. If you do not have either, use regular extra-virgin olive oil, and you will likely need to use more vinegar (either regular balsamic and white balsamic or all balsamic) than is called for in the recipe—maybe 2 teaspoons total. Taste as you go. I am very fond of the Casa Pareja olive oil from Spain (where all the best olive oils hail from, in my opinion); I discovered this outstanding value oil while living in Philadelphia; you can mail order it from DiBruno’s if you cannot find it where you live.

Strawberry Season Par Excellence

  
Once again, the first strawberries are here, and they are de-licious. The best in years. Red-ripe through and through, not a speck of white at the shoulder, juicy, sweet, with a glossy red brightness that only the freshest berry has, and only for a the fleetingest time. While I usually eat my berries sliced with cream and a little sugar, this year they truly are so good that I have been eating them plain, held by the stem and chewed down to the little frill of a crown. This is really saying something for someone who generally prefers her fruit cooked, in the form of a pie or at least a jam.
Not that this year’s strawberries would not make up admirably well in both cases, and right now is a good time to pick quarts and quarts of them at a farm if you want to make jam. (And if you don’t, you can go to one of the many local strawberry festivals and buy it, with a little shortcake for your lunch). On the pie front, I have an old recipe that calls for pureeing strawberries and combining them with gelatin, which forms the base, to be topped with meringue. It is old fashioned, pretty, and good. My old boss Gary used to make a pie with cornstarch-thickened mashed strawberries topped first with a mixture of cream cheese and sour cream and then fresh whole strawberries. And I absolutely love a true strawberry tart with a pastry cream base and an all-butter crust.
Still, less is more this year. To showcase the berries with minimal adornment, you could simply douse them with a little aged balsamic vinegar, pepper, and mint. Or for something slightly fancier but still completely simple, try these marinated strawberries. Purchase your fresh-picked strawberries the day you want to eat them and do not refrigerate! I don’t even wash them—I just wipe away any specks of dirt with a slightly damp paper towel—but you can rinse them briefly if you must.
Strawberries in Red Wine
Make these up before you sit down to dinner, and they will be ready for your dessert. Do not refrigerate, which would damage the texture. Although 5 minutes in the freezer won’t hurt if you like a little chill. Serves 3.
1 pint perfect strawberries
1 tea lemon juice
A few thin slices of lemon rind
Scant 3 T fruity honey, such as raspberry
½ cup good-quality light red wine
Tiny pinch of salt
2 large mint leaves (optional, but nice)
½ cup heavy cream
Additional honey
1 tea Triple Sec or Cointreau (optional)
Wipe the strawberries clean of any dirt, and remove the stems and leaves, reserving a few tiny ones whole for garnish if you wish. In a small bowl, place the honey and stir in the lemon juice and rind. Add the strawberries; you can leave them whole if they are small, otherwise slice them in half or quarters. Toss gently and let them stand about 10 minutes; add the wine and, if using, the mint leaves and let stand another 10 minutes minimum, or up to perhaps 45 minutes. Whip the cream to a light, soft, ploppy stage, adding a little honey and the liqueur to taste, and serve it alongside or on top of the berries. Little glass or white dishes are pretty.
                                      

The First Strawberries

By the sheerest luck, I drove down a road that I don’t frequent much and saw the sign, tacked to a tree: “Our own strawberries.” Already? With all that rain? I hadn’t even been thinking about strawberries yet as a present versus anticipated pleasure. So, so much for writing about mayonnaise this week. Strawberries call.

At this early stage of the year, when a few pints are available rather than entire flats, the temptation is to just eat them out of hand. Early as it is, the berries are still red right through, with true strawberry flavor and, if not fully sweet as they will soon be, sweet enough. Strawberry shortcake seemed the just-so thing to do: classic, quick, requiring only a pint of good berries, a symbol of early summer, and preserve-making yet-to-come.

In New England, we make shortcake with biscuit, not sponge cake: that, after all, is why it’s called short-cake. It is old-fashioned and satisfying, for breakfast or dessert, a favorite end to church suppers and a centerpiece of June strawberry festivals. It is easy to make and easy to eat.

You can use any biscuit you like--buttermilk, sour milk, sweet milk, sour cream—and each brings a slightly different match to the berries. Sometimes, like here, I make a richer, and somewhat sturdier and less crumbly shortcake, particularly useful when you make it a large round instead of a lot of little small cakes—which, of course, is faster and leaves no messy counter to scrape clean. And eliminates the fussy assembly of individual servings.

Instead of whipped cream, I actually prefer the more traditional New England approach of pouring fresh, thick, unwhipped heavy cream over strawberry shortcake. Most people expect whipped, though, so I try not to be too purist when potentially inflexible diners are around—I can save that for private consumption. And if you cannot obtain real, high-butterfat, unhomogenized cream, you are better off with whipped anyway. For these reasons, the recipe below specifies whipped.

Strawberry Shortcake (This will serve 4-6.)

2 cups all-purpose flour (see Note)
1/3 cup sugar
½ tea salt
3 tea baking powder

1/3 cup butter (a generous 5 T) or a mixture of butter and lard

¾ cup whole fresh milk
1 egg

softened butter

1-2pints ripe, juicy strawberries (you could use the quart; I like a greater proportion of

of shortcake)

2 T sugar, more if needed

¾ c heavy cream, whipped

Triple-sift dry ingredients. Cut in butter; if using some lard, cut butter in first, then lard. Beat egg and milk together, and pour over, blending with a fork just until flour disappears. With your hands, gently turn the dough over a few times to bring it loosely together, then turn it into a buttered 9” cake pan, patting it lightly out to about ½ from the edge. Bake 15 minutes in a 425 F oven. Let cool in pan 5 minutes, then turn it out onto a rack and cool an additional 5 minutes.

While shortcake is baking, hull and slice strawberries, in half or quarters depending on size. Lightly crush about half of them with the back of a wooden spoon, then toss them all together lightly with the sugar and set aside; you can usually get away with less sugar on local berries, and they will still yield plenty of juice. When the shortcake has cooled down but is still warm, split it horizontally with a serrated bread knife, turning the cake to cut through evenly. Place the bottom, cut-side up, on a decorative pie plate (to catch juices), and spread with soft butter and about half the whipped cream. Distribute half the sweetened berries over the cream. Place the top of the shortcake, top-side up, on the berries. Spoon the remaining whipped cream into the center, cover with the remaining berries and their juices, and serve, cut in wedges or simply spooned, as soon as possible. Like summer, fresh strawberry shortcake is an ephemeral thing.

Note: You could use White Lily self-rising flour, a soft-wheat flour that already includes baking powder and salt, instead of all-purpose; increase the flour amount by ¼ cup, and cut the baking powder to 1 teaspoon. This flour is a bit more forgiving than a-p flour for making biscuits, but it is a light touch that goes a long way toward biscuit success.

P.S. OK, it’s a day later and suddenly there are the signs—everywhere. “Strawberries--Pick your own,” etc. Time to pull out the canning jars. As you can see, the lettuce is out too!