Berry Cool (and Strawberry Napoleons)
Hubby helped me fix the watering situation in our garden yesterday. The strawberry patch wasn’t getting enough water. When we bought the house last year, it came complete with a six-bed garden with in-ground sprinkler system, encircled by a cute picket fence. A gardener’s joy. I haven’t quite gotten the hang of gardening yet and I treat the plants I’ve put out there with the same benign neglect that characterizes my treatment of the orchids. The orchids have been blooming nonstop. And the herbs, despite my best efforts, flourished wildly last year. So did the strawberries.
I have two varieties in the strawberry patch: Seascapes, and Profumatas. I got the roots last year from the Raintree Nursery. I love Seascapes; whenever I visit Santa Monica, my aunt Lori takes me to the Farmer’s Market so I can buy them from Harry’s Berries. I always buy a flat and eat them out of the box, unwashed. I’ve never had Profumatas but I liked the name so much I went ahead and bought some roots.
I never managed to get any strawberries last year because Mr. Robin made away with most of my strawberry patch before Hubby sorted it out for me. Though I did nothing to take care of the strawberries (because I don’t know what to do), they have come back in full force this year. No weeds have managed to make their way into the strawberry patch. A friend tells me that strawberries are weeds themselves. As herbs are too, maybe that’s why the patch and the herb box are exploding with life.
Sifting through the groundcover yesterday, I found a big, fat, juicy, red and ripe Seascape strawberry that had somehow escaped Mr. Blue Jay’s ravenous beak. The strawberry patch has been under constant siege – just when the little berries are turning pinky-red, Mr. Blue Jay and his cohorts come in and gorge. I’d be okay if they ate everything (okay, maybe not) but they’re wasteful: they only eat bits and pieces and move on to the next nearly ripe berry. Such profligacy – but especially when it concerns my strawberry patch – pisses me off. Mr. Polston will appreciate this, but all others, especially avian lovers, need not go further in this sentence: Mr. Blue Jay’s days are numbered.
I plucked the strawberry from the vine, washed it in the water spray and gave it to Hubby. He took a bite and sighed.
“Mmmmm….”
“Good?”
“Yes.”
Two bites and it was gone. I found another ripe berry for me, a tiny little one that managed to pack more flavor in one bite than any of the Brobdinagian, store-bought strawberries currently in my fridge. Even with my currently faulty olfactory system, I could still smell the perfume of the fruit, and taste its sweetness and tartness. It was the taste of a lost childhood. Strawberries haven’t tasted like this since I was a kid, and only then at the height of a heavenly summer. In fact, they don’t seem to taste like anything at all now unless they’ve been macerated in sugar.
Strawberries have been around for over two thousand years but references to them are hard to come by; unlike other fruits and vegetables, they have never been a staple of any diet. Virgil and Ovid both refer to the strawberry – but just barely; and Pliny listed “fraga,” as one of Italy’s fruits. It wasn’t until the 13th century that the strawberry is found text again, though as a medicinal treatment. Unlike peaches and plums, which have been subjects of delicious odes, strawberries do not feature in the literary canon. Okay, Shakespeare makes one reference to strawberries in Richard III, but that’s about it.
It was the French who first cultivated the wood strawberry, Fragaria vesca and domesticated it. The French king, Charles V, had strawberries planted in his gardens at the Louvre in 1368. The English were also early adopters in the cultivation of strawberries – and named them, too. The Anglo-Saxon for hay is “streow.” One theory is that the Anglo-Saxons called the strawberry a "hayberry" because it ripened at the same time hay was baled. Another thought is that the name comes from a practice of stringing the berries on straws of hay, which can still be seen in parts of Ireland today. Regardless of the reason for its name, the Anglo Saxon variations of the word, from "streowberige, strea berige, streowberge, streaw berian wisan, streberi lef," to "streberewyse" and finally, "strawberry," show a long history of the fruit in England.
For a period in the fifteenth century, strawberries were used mainly as decoration for its pretty flowers and fruit, or as an herbal remedy. By the sixteenth century, three European species of fragaria had been catalogued and several sub-species identified. The original three native European species are F. vesca, the common garden strawberry, F. moschata, the “musky” strawberry, also known as “hautbois” because its long flower stems rise above the leaves (popular in England), and F. viridis, a green strawberry. Strawberries were also native in the New World: in Virginia, the F. virginiana made its way to Europe through unknown means and was prized for its large fruit and abundant leaves. Another American species, the F. chiloensis, was found and the two species were bred, resulting in the modern strawberry (F. x ananassa). There are about 600 varieties of strawberries today – all of which are descended from these original wild species (prolific breeders aren’t they?).
Strawberries are mysterious things, popping in and out of history with infrequency, lending each sighting (and citing) the cachet of something rare and precious. So it’s rather sad what we have today. We’ve been bamboozled. The big, gorgeous red strawberries currently populating the grocery stores are frauds. They are genetically engineered by the University of California at Davis. California now accounts for approximately 80% of the nation’s strawberry supply. Florida comes in a distant second, followed by international growers Mexico, New Zealand, Canada, and Latin America. The most popular – or rather, the most readily available strawberries on the market, are the Camarosas (the mutants created by some white lab coats with genius IQs and a distinct lack of taste buds). They have a ten month growing season and a ten day shelf life when properly stored.
What they lack, however, is flavor or scent, both of which are woefully fragile and wholly unsuited to shipping. It’s hard to find organic strawberries or heirloom strawberries these days, unless you live near the Santa Monica Farmer’s Markets or other organic producers and markets, but they’re so worth it. Pay attention. “California strawberries” really are; they’re just not Seascapes or Chandlers or other heirloom varieties. Those are the ones you want. I think of Hubby’s blissful sigh. It’s not a sound you hear if you’ve never eaten a strawberry without having to sugar it, if you’ve never smelled the fragrance of a real strawberry. It’s ironic really. The Latin name, fraga, actually means – and refers to – the fruit’s fragrance.
A favorite strawberry dessert:
Strawberry Napoleons
Berries
- 2 cups hulled and sliced Seascape strawberries
Pastry
- 2 sheets of puff pastry, cut into 2 inch squares, baked according to directions.
Pastry Cream
- 2 cups whole milk
- 1 cup confectioner’s sugar
- 1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
- 5 egg yolks
- 3 ½ T corn starch
- 2 T butter
Bring milk, ½ cup sugar and scraped vanilla beans to a boil in saucepot. Beat ½ cup sugar, corn starch and yolks until thick and pale, to ribbon stage. Temper the egg mixture with a little bit of the hot milk, then whisk in the hot milk. Discard vanilla beans. Pour mixture into saucepot and return to heat. Allow cream mixture to boil for 5 minutes. Whisk in butter.
Cover with plastic wrap and cool in fridge until ready to use.
To assemble:
Pipe vanilla pastry cream onto a puff pastry square. Top with berry slices. Make alternating layers of puff pastry, pastry cream and berries. Top with puff pastry and dust with confectioner’s sugar. Serve chilled.
Comments