You can’t actually make a week’s worth of meals out of nothing but strawberries. Well, you could, but I’m pretty sure you’d be sorry by about Day Four. Once you’ve done strawberries in yogurt for breakfast, strawberry-spinach salad with avocado for lunch, and strawberry daiquiris or strawberry margaritas for dinner (oh come on, you can’t tell me you’ve never done that!), you’re pretty much down to desserts.
Strawberries and strawberry shortcake — made with a homemade biscuit rather than sponge cake if you want the real thing — are quintessentially summer’s beginning hereabouts. And our local berries, whether you pick them yourself or buy them in flats or by the quart at Gingersnap Farms in Trappe, Lockbrair Farms in Worton or Godfrey’s Farm outside Sudlersville are the best. One big reason is their freshness. Strawberries, which are good sources of folate, potassium, Vitamin C and manganese, retain their full nutritional complement for about two days then begin to decline. If you plan to keep berries for a day or two before using them fresh, put them unwashed into the frig and set the refrigerator temperature at about 36F degrees.
Before using fresh berries, wash with a spritz of water, since they soak it up and it dilutes the flavor. If they are extremely sandy (this often is the case if they are picked a day after a rain), float them in water briefly and sort of disturb them with your hands to jostle off the soil or sand for only about 10 seconds. Scoop them out gently and drain in a colander before taking off the tops and cutting them up for the jam pot or bowl or freezer bag.
Strawberries are so easy to freeze and are a great treat in the winter. Simply wash them quickly almost as soon after you bring them home as possible, take off the tops and pop them into freezer bags. Gently push out most of the air before closing, then put them into the freezer. That’s it. Half-thawed and thrown into the blender, they make great slushies or frozen umbrella drinks –you know, the kind the cabana boy brings while you’re stretched luxuriously beneath an umbrella on the beach.
Despite what I said above about not using strawberries for the week’s worth of meals, there is a link below to a series of recipes like chicken salad with strawberries and grilled duck with strawberry-fig glaze. The old Rodale’s Garden-Fresh Cooking by Judith Benn Hurley (Rodale, 1987) has a stack of recipes from hors d’oeuvres to dessert using fresh strawberries, virtually all of which are worth trying. Some are worthy of being added to your automatic repertoire. (Don’t have one of those? We’ll talk later.). She starts off with Strawberry Cheese – mascarpone or cream cheese, poppy seeds, chopped strawberries and a thyme sprig — that is superb on a bagel or whole-grain toast in the morning or on a mild cracker or toasted slice of baguette for cocktails or even spread on a crepe. Hurley goes on to Cracked Wheat with Strawberries and Chives, Strawberries, Snow Peas and Shrimp with Raspberry Vinaigrette, Grilled Swordfish with Strawberry Marinade, Roast Veal with Strawberry Glaze (you can get good, humanely-raised veal from St Brigid’s Farm in Kennedyville), and Strawberry and Ginger Vinegar, which is lovely drizzled on fruit salad.
If you’ve never done it before, you might want to make a small batch of strawberry jam. You can use the jam for the usual – toast, crackers when you need something sweet and nothing’s in the house — spoon a dollop into plain yogurt for breakfast or dessert, thin it slightly to use as filling for cream cake, or give it as a hostess gift your friends aren’t likely to get any place else. I make strawberry jam with walnuts and Cointreau, though candied ginger or orange peel would be great alternatives. Either way, it’s something people wouldn’t be able to buy, which makes it quintessentially your own.
Strawberry Margarita
1 pint strawberries
1 lime
¼ cup agave syrup
½ cup 2nd best tequila (save the best for something where the tequila taste is going to be more prominent)
1 capful of Cointreau
crushed ice
Put berries, lime, agave, Cointreau and tequila in a blender and blend for a minute to bring contents down so you can put in lots of ice. Then fill the blender with crushed ice, and blend until it’s a slushy. Pour into chilled glasses.
Strawberry Mascarpone Tart
1 pie shell, baked and cooled
1 pint fresh strawberries, washed and hulled and marinated for an hour in a little demarara or light brown sugar, just enough to bring some of the juices out, like two tblsp
2/3 cup mascarpone cheese (you can substitute cream cheese in a pinch as you could with the strawberry hazelnut torte recipe below, but it isn’t nearly as good in this as mascarpone)
1/3 cup confectioner’s sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
Mix sugar, vanilla and mascarpone and spread it into crisp, cool pie shell. Drain strawberries and arrange them over the mascarpone. Drizzle juice overtop and serve immediately. A slightly different take on this is to drizzle the top with sweetened Balsamic vinegar – heat two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar with a teaspoon of honey. Cool and drizzle it overtop the tart.
https://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Strawberry-Spinach-Salad-I/Detail.aspx
https://www.eatingwell.com/recipes_menus/collections/healthy_strawberry_recipes
https://www.pastrywiz.com/archive/recipe/0257.htm
https://www.cooking.com/recipes-and-more/recipes/Strawberry-Hazelnut-Torte-recipe-3784.aspx
https://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/pavlova/
https://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Strawberry-Hazelnut-Torte
https://gonewengland.about.com/od/morerecipes/r/recsberryrita.htm
https://urbanext.illinois.edu/strawberries/recipes.cfm
https://www.intimateweddings.com/blog/how-to-make-strawberry-jam-hot-damn-this-is-good-jam/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln_Zav55y3A&feature=related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgXJ3RC5R5I&feature=related
Robin Wood Kurowski says
Nancy, thanks for this! I am going to make your strawberry and ginger vinegar tomorrow.
We are delightfully up to our ears in strawberries. Between our daily pickings and the big holiday patch hunt with our grand-girls…..strawberries are featured in all our meals and drinks….and beauty routine!
The grand-grils love strawberry smoothies and crab, pineapple and avocado salad…..and at 2 and 5 their latest best new thing is a strawberry facial masque. Lots of grins and giggles when we paint our faces and also taste before we rinse.
At the other end of the girl spectrum….my mom loves when we freeze or Jack Lalanne juice them and add to her chardonnay
Finally and although our 60 something parrot is not a fan of red foods…..he does indulge in anything strawberryish…..have you ever seen a Strawberry Beaked Yellow Headed Amazon?