Strawberries are packed with vitamin C, potassium , dietary fiber, folate and antioxidants. Not only are strawberries delicious, they are good for you, obviously. But trust Wikipedia to suck all the joy out of something as delightful as a strawberry. A strawberry “ is not a botanical berry, but an aggregate accessory fruit”. While this information is not as quite as disturbing as looking behind the curtain and discovering that the Wizard of Oz is a merely a nice man from Kansas, it does not inspire felicity. Strawberries are exquisitely tasty, juicy, glistening, ruby-red globules of bliss which happen to healthy food. One doubts that there are many aggregate accessory fruitopians wandering out there.
These wonderful aggregate accessory fruits* abound right now, and so it is time to claim your rightful fill of them. The farm stands and green markets are groaning with the weight of so many strawberries! Hull a handful and sit on the front steps to watch the passing parade. Strawberries are the prelude to summer porch behavior.
Experiment this weekend. While it may be cliché, pop a couple of strawberries into a glass of Champagne. They will beautify that sparkling beverage. It is like algebra – you are squaring two kinds of perfection, resulting in a fizzy glass of X. Even if you are cheap like me and use Prosecco or Cava…
One day I would like to go to Wimbledon. Not for the tennis, mind you, but for the legendary strawberries and cream. The concept of strawberries and cream is genius; so simple, so pure, so divine. Sun-warmed berries are already perfection, but you can go ahead and gild those lilies, and lay on the whipped cream. Slather it on. Nirvana. https://www.babble.com/best-recipes/strawberries-and-cream-a-simple-summer-classic/
Now you can start tinkering. Take those strawberries and whipped cream, and add some sponge cake and meringues and voila – Eton Mess Trifle: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3090675/eton-mess-trifle
This is one of my favorite summertime dishes. Take the strawberries and whipped cream and add some simple shortcake: https://food52.com/recipes/17661-james-beard-s-strawberry-shortcakes Taste the sweet, smooth whipped cream, combined with the juicy berries and crumbly, salty shortcake. It is time travel for me. I am back in the kitchen in the house where I grew up. The room is warm because we have had the gas oven churning away, baking the shortcakes. But I can walk away, out to the cool shady front porch, and I can sit in one of the old wicker chairs, eat my shortcake and read a book. The perfect summer pastime: literature and fine food.
A few more ingredients are required for this Strawberry Crisp, but it is easy and sweet and you don’t have to turn on the oven – one of my adult requirements for perfect summer eating: https://www.pbs.org/food/fresh-tastes/strawberry-crisp/
Now some of you might be more ambitious than the rest of us. In which case I invite you to try Melissa Clark’s Double Strawberry Cheesecake recipe. You do have to turn the oven on for 30 minutes. Call me when it has cooled, and I’ll bring the Prosecco.
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1016566-double-strawberry-cheesecake
And finally, our friends at Food52 have a great strawberry recipe that doesn’t require an oven, just a food processor and a freezer. No wonder it is one of their Community Picks. It is a fabulous combination: simplicity and blessed coolth for our crazy, overheated world.
https://food52.com/recipes/28429-sensational-strawberry-sorbet
Years ago my mother gave me a small metal strawberry huller, which has since disappeared. Actually, I don’t think I have seen it for twenty years – never once in this house. So, as the family disappointment, I stopped hulling strawberries and merely lopped off their leafy little heads with a paring knife. You have to sit through a commercial before you can see this helpful video, so I do apologize, but it really is one of those brilliant ideas you wish you could claim as your own – using a drinking straw to hull strawberries: https://www.foodandwine.com/blogs/2014/05/26/how-to-hull-strawberries-with-a-straw
*“Technically, the strawberry is an aggregate accessory fruit, meaning that the fleshy part is derived not from the plant’s ovaries but from the receptacle that holds the ovaries.[4] Each apparent “seed” (achene) on the outside of the fruit is actually one of the ovaries of the flower, with a seed inside it.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry
“Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It’ll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they’ll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields… and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?”
― Sam Gamgee
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