A Fool for Strawberries

Strawberry fool. Lucy Mercer, A Cook and Her Books

I'm a fool for strawberries, the tart and sweet fruits of spring. I know they are available all year round, but when the days get longer and the temps start rising, strawberries seem the perfect answer to every noshing question. "What shall I have for breakfast?" Strawberries with vanilla yogurt and a sprinkle of granola. "What shall I give the girls to snack on after school?" A big bowl of strawberries with a teeny bowl of either white or brown sugar for dipping. "What about dessert?" you ask and I answer "Strawberries and Cream."

This version of strawberries and cream is called a "fool," an old-fashioned dessert that is simply sweetened, whipped cream with pureed fruit. You could use other soft fruits and berries such as mango and blackberries for a delicious variation.

Strawberry Fool
8 Servings

1 pound fresh strawberries, rinsed and hulled
Additional strawberries for garnishing, if desired
1/2 cup sugar
Zest of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 1/2 cups cold heavy whipping cream

1. In a food processor, puree berries with sugar until smooth and lump-free. Add lemon juice and zest.

2. Beat cream with an electric mixer until stiff peaks form. Use a spatula to gently fold in 1/4th of fruit puree, gradually adding more until all is incorporated. Scoop mixture into covered container and refrigerate for at least one hour. When ready to serve, spoon into individual dessert glasses and garnish with fresh berries.

Here's the step-by-step. Honestly, this takes more time to describe than it will take you to make it. Pin this recipe "Super Easy and Delicious Desserts."

Red, ripe strawberries. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Strawberries ready for slicing. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

A dusting of lemon zest before pureeing. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Beat heavy whipping cream until it looks just like this ~softly swirling peaks. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Gradually fold in berry puree. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Incorporate all the strawberry puree into the cream. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

This post is part of #LetsLunch, a monthly Twitter party from a global group of bloggers. May's theme is Fruit Fiesta. Visit these other wonderful writers for more cooking inspiration:

Rejuvenating Balinese Green Apple Salad at Spicebox Travels.

Cantaloupe Pie at Tea and Scones.

Mango Refrigerator Cake at Asian in America.

Sticky Pears at Monday Morning Cooking Club.

Grapefruit Bourbon Cocktail at www.GlassOfFancy.com

 Mango Kale Salad at EleanorHoh.com

Pound Cake Dessert Sandwiches



Pound Cake Dessert Sandwich with Strawberries by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

We all know about sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and supper, now meet a dessert sandwich - juicy strawberries dripping over whole milk ricotta, between two slices of buttery pound cake. This inspired and summery dessert comes from Susan Russo's delightful new cookbook, "The Encyclopedia of Sandwiches: Recipes, History and Trivia for Everything Between Two Slices of Bread." (Quirk, 2011).


The recipe is a terrific use for stale or leftover pound cake. It reminds me a little bit of the treat my husband's grandmother would fry up for him - mayonnaise-coated pound cake slices. Macerate some sliced strawberries in orange juice and zest, griddle the pound cake slices, spread with rich ricotta, and assemble all for a tasty dessert.

Begin with a loaf of my home-baked cream cheese pound cake, the only pound cake recipe you will ever need. Gather some berries and ricotta and you're in business.

Pound Cake Sandwich: The Ultimate Dessert Sandwich
from "The Encyclopedia of Sandwiches" by Susan Russo (Quirk, 2011)

Macerated Strawberries

2 to 2 1/2 cups fresh ripe strawberries, thinly sliced *see note
1/4 cup sugar, or to taste
3 tablespoons orange juice
Zest of 1 small orange
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

About 2 tablespoons butter, divided
1 pound cake, sliced thin
1 (8-ounce) container whole-milk ricotta or mascarpone

1. A few hours beforehand, prepare strawberries: In a glass bowl, combine all ingredients for macerated strawberries. Toss well. Let rest at room temperature at least two hours.

2. Butter both sides of cake slices. Place on a hot buttered griddle and cook 2 minutes per side, or until golden. Remove from heat. For each sandwich, spread 2 tablespoons ricotta on one slice of grilled cake, top with a spoonful of berries, and close sandwich. Serve warm. Makes 4 to six, depending on the thickness of the cake.

* Frozen strawberries can be substituted for fresh; just reduce the amount of orange juice since frozen berries will release more liquid.

Check out more sandwich recipes from "The Encyclopedia of Sandwiches":

• Chicken salad from the Loveless Cafe
• The Jucy Lucy cheese-stuffed burger.

Sparkling strawberry lemonade



Sparkling strawberry lemonade by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Here's a cooling taste of summer for a Fourth of July holiday weekend: Fill a tall glass pitcher with Fizzy Strawberry Lemonade, easily assembled from ingredients from your freezer and pantry.

Fizzy Strawberry Lemonade

• 1 pound bag frozen strawberries, slightly thawed

• 1 (12 ounce) container frozen lemonade concentrate

• 2 tablespoons sugar, or more to taste

• 3 cups club soda, chilled

• Fresh strawberries for garnish, optional



Directions:

1. Place frozen berries in glass container and defrost on 50 percent power for two minutes.

2. Place berries and lemonade concentrate in glass container and blend thoroughly together, about 30 seconds. Add sugar, taste and add more, keeping in mind it will be diluted with club soda. At this point, the mixture can be placed in an airtight container and refrigerated until ready to serve.

3. When ready to serve, pour strawberry lemonade mixture into glass pitcher and add club soda, in equal parts. Serve over ice and garnish with fresh strawberries.

Lemons by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Strawberries by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Scaling Mount Nacho

How do you feed five hungry girls at a sleepover? I figured Mexican-ish food would be the way to go, and crafted a Nacho Mountain. This is a pretty basic idea, but I thought it turned out well and the girls made a respectable dent in it. I cooked taco filling, using ground beef and the tried-and-true seasoning envelope. For the mountain, I began with a base of large tortilla chips, put some filling down, big plops all across the platter, topped with queso (just the Velveeta brick melted with a bit of milk in a crockpot, the remainder used as "cheese dip" at the table) and shredded cheese. Then another layer of the small, round chips. Black beans, olive slices, avocado slices and more cheese followed on the top layer. If I were serving grown-ups, I would put some salsa around, but the gringo girls didn't want that much heat, so I served it on the side, with bowls of sour cream, as well.

The dessert, which got demolished before I could grab the camera, was a similar idea. Big platter, lots of freshly washed, whole strawberries; whipped, sweetened cream; and hot fudge sauce (again with the jar, I know homemade would have been better, but the girls didn't complain). I pulled a few extras out to taste in the hot fudge sauce - marshmallows, potato chips. For the record, sliced, frozen Mayfield ice cream sandwiches are delish dipped in hot fudge sauce. Proustian moment: a Shoney's restaurant and the ever-popular (and free on your birthday!) hot fudge cake.

Homemade Strawberry Jam

(Above) Red Ripe Strawberries


(Above) "Hey, Mom, do we really get to do this with our hands?"

(Above) Laura's Strawberry Jam, Ready for Gift-Giving.

During summer days, when the girls are out of school, it's essential to have a few activities to keep little hands busy. Making strawberry jam is an easy and rewarding project that has passed my personal test -- it's perfect for both a 10-year old and 3-year old to do together and each girl feels like they made their own contribution.

If I were a total granola mom, I would begin at the U-pick farm, but these berries came straight from the Kroger produce department. I bought six quarts and had a couple cups of berries left over, which isn't a problem in this house, we put them on top of yogurt or in cereal or eat them out of hand with a bit of sugar or balsamic vinegar (that's really for the grown-ups, though).

I used the Ball brand envelope for Freezer Strawberry Jam, just one envelope to four cups of crushed fruit, plus one and a half cups of sugar. I'm no fool, so each girl got her own cutting board, bowl, fruit, pectin, sugar, and jars. I like the Ball plastic freezer jars, but used the new-fashioned canning jars, too.

The girls hulled and sliced the fruit, Laura using a paring knife and Lindsey using a plastic knife. The genius of the strawberry is that a little one can use a plastic knife and actually do the job efficiently and cleanly. After the slicing, the girls got their hands into the mix, smushing the berries between their fingers, then employing a potato masher to smash the berries more. After the sugar and pectin were added, we stirred for three minutes (excellent opportunity to use the kitchen timer), then spooned the mixture into the jars.

Within an hour, we had eight jars of homemade strawberry jam. I included a jar in a welcome basket for our new pastor's family. Homemade buttermilk scones and strawberry jam should make a tasty breakfast.

A Box Full of Spring

(Above) Watermelon Radishes

(above) Sugar Snap Peas


(Above) Strawberries surrounded by mint,
lettuce and collard greens.

Opening today's CSA box was like a snapshot of spring: butter lettuce, watermelon radishes, sugar snap peas, and strawberries. Sweet potatoes and collard greens rounded out the bounty.

This is my plan of action:

1. Strawberries. Gobble gobble. I'm not a big fan of cooked strawberries. The color goes to mud and the texture is indescribably unappealing. Fresh berries need so little care to make them edible. I hull and slice them, wash and dry them, then place the berries in a container in the fridge awaiting snackers. Nice to offer the girls fresh strawberries with their morning toast or maybe a few bites to stall them while I cook supper.

2. Collard Greens. Collards are one of my favorite foods. They are certainly this green-loving girl's favorite green. As much as I love Southern-style greens cooked with pork, I'll probably stir-saute these in olive oil with a bit o' garlic. Serve with ham and homemade mac and cheese.

3. Mint tips. The fragrant, pointy tips of the mint plant. A nice change from the chocolate mint which is taking over my front flower bed. I'm a little stumped on how to use this. It's a little late for Derby Day and mint juleps. (Don't even get me started on the Sterling julep cups that by all rights should be mine.) My trusty Gourmet Cookbook offers three suggestions: roasted lamb with new potatoes and English mint sauce, summer fruit salad with mint sugar, and minted peas and onions. The mint sugar for the fruit salad looks to be a winner - perhaps the strawberries will last long enough for a shower of mint sugar.

4. Lettuce. A pretty, fluttery rose-like flower of butter lettuce. Salad on the hoof, in a manner of speaking.

5. Sugar Snap Peas. Maybe I should use the mint with Sugar Snap Peas? I'm inclined to go with shallot sauteed in butter and then a few minutes with the peas. Like strawberries, they are so perfect, they require very little work.

6. Radishes, watermelon variety, with greens. These are fun to slice, rather like pastel version of the showy Chioggia radishes. Really peppery bite, but radishes are not meant to be candy. Roasting is an option. Gourmet Cookbook braises the radishes and serves them with raspberry vinegar. Some will be sliced thin and used on salads. The greens are peppery also, and will be stir-fried with some chard.

7. Sweet Potatoes. An All-South meal is coming together here - ham, mac and cheese, and collard greens, to be finished off with Sweet Potato Pie (that song will be running through my head for days). The pate brisee is already in the fridge and the sweet potatoes are roasted. I'll make Ma Ma's Sweet Potato Custard Pie from "Beans, Greens and Sweet Georgia Peaches" by Damon Lee Fowler, one of my favorite Southern cookbooks. He's a man who knows pies.

CSA: Celebrating Seasonal Abundance

Beauty Shots

Above: Farmers Fresh CSA New Member Pack &

Below: This Week's Produce

It may be raining outside, but it's a beautiful day inside my house because I picked up my first Farmers Fresh CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) shipment of the year. I waited a bit late to join in this year -- the program started in March, but I'm so glad I signed up. The box is filled, literally filled with lettuces, beets still clinging to bits of soil, and snow peas, snow peas! vibrant green and just-picked crisp, crying out to be stir-fried!

The new member pack was a nice surprise, a Farmers Fresh tote filled with grains, honey, coffee and the makings for herbal tea. This is a picture of the member's package, along with my girls' opening the presents: goat's milk soap samples and lip balms.

And this is what I plan to cook with the CSA bounty:

1. Strawberries. The favored Mercer method of strawberry consumption is to clean the berries, hull and halve them and serve them with a bowl of demerara sugar. I used to mail order demerara, but now you can buy organic demerara at Kroger or Wal-Mart, just look near the granulated sugar. It has the molasses taste of brown sugar, but it's less refined and less moist, so you get non-melty crunch with each luscious bite. If I get ambitious, and if the berries last long enough, I'm tempted to make a simple pavlova, with a slow-baked meringue base and simple sugared berries serve on top.

2. Snow peas. I could go all Martha and make that ridiculously time-consuming, but very tasty, stuffed snow pea appetizer. I think that will have to wait. I think shrimp and snow peas will make an excellent stir-fry for supper. Maybe some fried rice on the side, which will incorporate the beautiful green onion.

3. The beautiful green onion can be used in the fried rice/stir-fry combo mentioned above or perhaps in a comforting potato soup. BTW, I've been waiting all year for the CSA potatoes. I have a collection of leek greens in my freezer, so the onion greens will surely go into my next batch of vegetable stock.

4. This week's herb bundle includes cilantro, admittedly, not a favorite, although I'm not one of those cilantro haters who detect a soapy taste in the green herb. This month's Fine Cooking has a recipe for Kohlrabi and Radish Slaw with Cumin and Cilantro that deserves a try.

5. Loose Leaf and Hydroponic Lettuces. Initial game plan is to use them in salads, but I'll keep in mind a Jacques Pepin recipe that uses a vinaigrette-dressed salad as a base for a simple pan-fried piece of fish.

6. Beets. I love beets, especially pickled beets on a Greek Salad (see last summer's post). A few months back I made roasted vegetables with dill from a Gourmet Cookbook recipe. I think that may merit a second try. Served with a nice piece of steak, or perhaps a roasted chicken breast.