Ten Quick Smart Things to do With Strawberries: Day Three

Does anyone else remember brunch in 70’s?  Yes, quiche was there, and very chic indeed.  But I especially remember this seriously simple and delicious dessert: a bowl of ripe strawberries was served, flanked with a dish of sour cream and a dish of brown sugar. Guests dipped a berry into the sour cream then into the sugar.  Finger food!  In more formal circles than ours, I suspect that each guest had their own little plate...

Either way, you can recapture and elevate this lovely retro dish by trading in ordinary brown sugar for dark muscovado sugar (one of my obsessions).  Stick with the sour cream (who doesn’t love sour cream?) or swap it for crème fraiche, or labneh, or drained yogurt, or any other slightly tangy or tart fresh cheese or cultured milk.  Could anything be easier?

For more things to do with ripe strawberries, see recent and upcoming posts.  Also see my new book, Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts (Artisan 2012) by Alice Medrich.

Ten Quick Smart Things To Do With Strawberries: Day Two

Make sorbet without an ice cream? No cooking either? You can prep this sweet and refreshing dessert in fewer minutes (not counting freezing time) than it would take you to go out and buy it. It’s also a perfect way to use those delicious leftover berries that no longer look party fresh. Preserves instead of sugar syrup contribute a smooth texture and complex flavor. Serve the sorbet plain or with a little whipped cream or a dab of crème fraîche right from the carton. Oh, and yes, you can skip the balsamic vinegar; just replace it with water. That’s it.

FURIOUSLY FAST STRAWBERRY (BALSAMIC) SORBET
Makes almost 3 cups

Ingredients

1 pound (4 cups) ripe, flavorful strawberries

½ cup plus 2 tablespoons strawberry (or raspberry) preserves

Pinch of salt

A small lemon

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice, or to taste

4 teaspoons balsamic vinegar, or to taste

¼ cup water

Equipment

Food processor or blender

Rinse and hull the berries and put them in the food processor or blender with ½ cup of the preserves and the salt. Finely grate zest from half of the lemon into the processor bowl. Puree until smooth. Add the lemon juice, vinegar, and water and pulse to mix. Taste and add the remaining jam as necessary for sweetness and adjust the lemon juice, vinegar, and salt if necessary. The puree should taste a bit sweeter than you think it should and have a little zip to it.

Scrape the mixture into a shallow pan, cover, and freeze until hard, 3 to 4 hours.

 

                                        

Break the frozen mixture into chunks with a fork and process in the food processor or blender until there are no more frozen pieces to process, stopping to redistribute the mixture from time to time, until it is smooth and creamy and lightened in color. 

It may be frozen enough to serve right out of the food processor, or you can scrape it into a container and return it to the freezer until needed. If the sorbet freezes too hard, let it soften in the fridge for about 15 minutes, or carefully soften it in the microwave on the defrost setting, a few seconds at a time.

For more ideas for strawberries, see my new book, Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts (Artisan 2012) by Alice Medrich, page 48.

Ten Quick Smart Things To Do With Strawberries: Day One

I know. No one really needs a recipe for serving ripe strawberries topped with whipped cream, right? But I thought I would start with my basics (Alice’s Rules, so to speak) and let everyone take it (or not) from there.   

The strawberries: Start with great tasting berries. Don’t assume that the biggest strawberries are the best; the big guys are often the least tasty and odd shaped and odd sized small ones are sometimes spectacular. Great strawberries don’t need to be sugared, and unless you prefer otherwise, and you needn’t sweeten the cream either! If you don’t shop at a market (or farmers' market) where tasting is assumed, ask for a taste before you buy. You will be surprised at how often you will get a “yes”. Make friends with that farmer or produce person, you are going to need him/her (and a knife) later, when melons are in season!

Here’s how to keep ripe strawberries in good condition for several days: when you get home from the market pick through and discard any berries with a moldy or otherwise rotten spot. Spread berries (without rinsing them) in a single layer on a double layer of paper towels in a shallow container. Cover the berries with another paper towel. Cover and refrigerate the container. They should last for several days this way. Rinse and hull berries as you need them. 

The cream: Use great cream. Look for only one ingredient on the carton or bottle: cream. Don’t buy pre-sweetened cream or dairy topping or cream in an aerosol can (yes, I know how much fun that can be…but save it). The best tasting cream is not ultra-pasteurized nor is it stabilized with carrageenan (or anything else). Ultra-pasteurized cream has the faint flavor of canned milk and carrageenan produces a silky texture at the cost of flavor…

If you add vanilla extract to your cream, use pure (not artificial) extract. Don’t believe anyone who says no one can taste (or smell) the difference. Vanilla is nice, but not essential to good whipped cream. 

If you sweeten your whipped cream, use granulated rather than powdered sugar. Powdered sugar tastes faintly of the starch that is added to keep the sugar from clumping. Adjust the sugar towards the end of beating; sweetened cream tastes less sweet when it is fluffy than when it is fluid.

Reminder: Cream must be very cold or it will not whip properly: it will either refuse to thicken or it will curdle. If you are just back from the store and the cream has been in your shopping basket and car for a while, refrigerate it again before you try to whip it. Start with a chilled bowl and beaters for a little extra whipped cream insurance!

Whipping the cream: Using chilled beaters (or a hand held whisk), beat 1 cup of cream with ½ teaspoon or more vanilla (if using), in a chilled bowl until it holds a soft shape. Gradually add 2-3 teaspoons sugar (to taste), and beat until it holds a good shape but is not too stiff.

For more things to do with strawberries, see upcoming posts. And see my new book, Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts (Artisan 2012) for more strawberry ideas and ten ways to flavor whipped cream!

Love To Cook, Hate To Bake?

My eighth book, Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts is just out. You might be thinking, “what, another dessert book, can’t she give it a rest?”

What’s new, fun, and interesting about Sinfully? 

After seven books, I’ve shifted my perspective from baker to cook. I’ve always noticed that people who love (and are good at) baking think and learn differently than people who love (and are good at) cooking.  How many fantastic Top Chef candidates get knocked out of the competition because they can’t make a good dessert?  How many good home cooks put out fabulous, seemingly effortless meals with a store-bought dessert finale? Maybe this is you. Maybe you find baking too finicky or constraining. Maybe you like to taste and adjust as you cook; maybe you hate to follow a recipe exactly, or don’t like to measure precisely.  Maybe your cakes and cookies are more like doorstops and paperweights…

All cooks need simple sensational little desserts up their sleeves: clever easy things to do with fruit or ice cream, or a lightening quick gingerbread, a great little sauce, compote, or pudding, or a easier-than-it-looks soufflé.  We all need recipes that are simple but not simple minded, terrific but not time consuming, compelling but not complicated.

My editor (a very stylish cook who hates to bake) delights in saying that Sinfully is the dessert book with no pastry bags, pastry brushes, rolling pins, offset spatulas, or baking skills!

Visit my brand new and beautiful website (see previous post!) at http://alicemedrich.com/ to learn more about the book or check out my touring schedule. Maybe I will see you this week in Petaluma, San Diego, Westlake Village, New York (in late summer), or elsewhere in the Fall. 

My New Website

The title of this post suggests that I have redesigned or remodeled my old website.  That would be nice.  But the reality is that this is my very first website and it is now live. Finally. It took as long to design and launch as it me took to write an entire book, which I also did in the meanwhile (see right and my next post). The site is quite pretty (as is the book) which I feel ok about saying, since I did not design it myself. I am grateful to The Engine Room and Doug Ridgeway for that. I am pleased. I am also thrilled to cross it off my interminable to do list.

http://alicemedrich.com/

Even if you are not interested in my bio, book tour itinerary, list of books, video course, vintage and current media or video clips…You will find lovely photos and favorite recipes, and I will be adding more of both (especially from Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts) anon. Since I am a complete newbie when it comes to websites, your comments are welcome. Come on now, take a look!

Alice in Videoland Part Two

If you haven’t seen the preview of my video course, check it out at http://www.craftsy.com/class/Decadent-Chocolate-Cakes/64 .

The beauty of a video course, and what makes it different from food TV, is that there is no rush to fit into a five-minute morning news slot or even a half-hour program. I get an opportunity to actually teach, as though I had a live class. I can explain all of the “ifs” “ands” or “buts,” discuss options, talk about what to do if something goes wrong, or what may happen if you don’t do it my way! I can give options and really get into things. It’s not purely about entertainment, although it is beautiful to watch. What more could I have wished for?

Maybe you’ve always wanted to perfect a show-off special occasion cake, master chocolate ruffles, or learn a little more about working with chocolate. Maybe you know an aspirational baker or cook who doesn’t have access to or funds for a cooking course?  This one is a bargain. It can be watched over and over again, and it’s interactive: students can chat with me, ask questions, and interact with others taking the same class.  I’m having my morning coffee these days while answering student questions.  And I’m learning from the questions too!  The Craftsy platform is pretty cool. I’m pretty psyched. 

Confession:   A couple of the recipes in the course are simpler to make than they look, which means that you can produce a gorgeous torte with perfect marbled glaze, or a whimsical chocolate centerpiece with far less effort than anyone will guess when they look at your results!

Alice In Videoland

Chatting with a serious documentary filmmaker decades before there was SO much food on TV, I expressed the opinion that the processes involved with chocolate and dessert making would look good on film.  She didn’t really get it! I explained how visual it all was: luxurious chocolate glaze flowing over a cake, up-close brush stokes marbleizing that glaze with milk chocolate so it looks like Italian or French art paper, deckle-edge ruffles of pure chocolate pealing off of a sheet pan, even the technique of beating and folding egg whites properly, lovingly, expertly, into a chocolaty batter. I thought it could be instructional and exquisitely beautiful. She looked dubious. I kid you not.

Decades later we have endless food TV—so what else is new?

Recently my publisher proposed that I teach video classes to support the launch of Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts (out next month, btw). We discussed the recipes during a very enthusiastic conference call with the lifestyle editor at craftsy.com, who would be our partner in this video adventure. In the back of my mind, I was vaguely disappointed. I was finally doing video, but with the wrong content! I love my new book, but Sang An’s photography is already amazing, and the whole point of Sinfully Easy is that no one needs video to succeed with the recipes!

Then a miracle happened. The Craftsy team “remembered” that their audience of passionate crafters and DIY-ers loves ambitious projects and are eager to learn technique. They want to learn skills, not just recipes. Sinfully Easy was too damn —easy (yay!)—and thus not ideal for video. Would I consider scrapping the original plan and coming up with a list of more challenging desserts?

It took me three minutes to get a new menu on paper.

The course launched last week and you can see a little preview of it here: http://www.craftsy.com/class/Decadent-Chocolate-Cakes/64