Like fireworks, fireflies and the subtle smiles of babies, the charm of strawberries is due in some part to their ephemeral nature. Nowdays, you can, of course, get strawberries in some form virtually all year -- they come from California, Florida and Mexico. But the strawberries we remember are those that arrive in late spring, fresh from some nearby field, or fresh-picked right off the bush.
Those are the berries that taste of sun and good sweet soil. They're plump and firm and juicy, and the first bite reminds you of every other warm spring day when you tasted the season's first bounty.
And, while they don't last long, they're almost endlessly versatile. Strawberry shortcake, the cliche, barely touches the surface of this tasty berry. Strawberries are stars in chilled soups, sensational with seafood and stunning in salads. With the season upon us, we asked some local chefs how they use strawberries creatively.
"I had them last night. Strawberries are so abundant right now," said Barry Fleischmann, of Innovative Gourmet in Owings Mills. "I served them with 25-year-old balsamic vinegar, and a little brown sugar. I wanted something that was caloric-ly light but rich in flavor. You cut the berries in thin slices, so they absorb the liquid, and they get all syrupy and wonderful."
Fleischmann said he also serves whole berries drizzled with Grand Marnier liqueur, or makes whipped cream flavored with a fruit liqueur such as Chambord to top the berries.
Or, he said, you can slice the berries in a skillet, drizzle them with a little melted butter, a little Grand Marnier, and a little brown sugar or honey and saute them until they're heated through. Spoon the sauteed berries over vanilla ice cream.
By themselves, strawberries are fairly nutritious -- a pint has just 97 calories, negligible fat and sodium, 182 milligrams of vitamin C, and 56.6 micrograms of folic acid, a vitamin that most people don't get enough of in their diets -- and that's the way they are eaten most of the time, according to the California Strawberry Commission.
But strawberries also lend themselves to lots of dressing up. "The presence of strawberries lends an elegance to any dish it graces," write Rolce Redard Payne and Dorrit Speyer Senior in their 1992 book, "Cooking with Fruit" (Crown, $22).
Cindy Wolf, executive chef at Savannah at the Admiral Fell Inn said she likes to serve strawberries with creme anglaise (custard sauce) or sabayon (a sweet sauce of egg yolks, sugar and wine) made with Madeira. "I also like to do individual tarts with lime custard," she said.
