Last Thursday, on my way home from work I was passing by one of the many fruit vendors in Chinatown. I usually go right by but I stopped in my tracks when I saw a crazy deal: 3 pints of strawberries for $2. Wow. That was insane. So, I went in and got a whole load of strawberries.
That’s all well and good, but then I was stuck wondering what the hell I was going to do with so much fruit. I don’t think there was any way we’d be able to go through that many strawberries without getting absolutely sick of ‘em, and really that’s something I’d rather avoid.
That night, I thought long and hard about ways to use strawberries. The old handy recipe for lemon squares came to mind and I figured that I could easily sub in strawberries for lemons. I mean, they’ve got this tart quality that would lend itself well. I took a pint and blended it down with half a cup of water, some sugar and a bit of lemon juice. I strained the seeds out and was left with a nice puree. So, where the recipe called for lemon juice, I swapped it for the puree. I added a little bit more flour to the mix and another egg, if only because there was a heck of a lot of puree.
The result? Ehh…I wasn’t impressed. I had way too much liquid in the topping. It resulted in an overly moist top part. The bottom crust layer was perfect though. I considered it a failure, but my family still liked it. My mom gave a piece or two to her coworkers and they were apparently raving about it. I’m not sure if they were just being nice about it, but hey, I’ll take praise where I can get it.
This morning, I was still wondering what to do about the other two pints. I went to the Food TV Canada site and pulled up recipes for strawberries. I pulled up a recipe for strawberry shortcake by Anna Olson. Her stuff is awesome. I’ve done a couple of her recipes before in the past and they’ve always turned out really great. If I’m flipping channels and I come across an episode of Sugar, I’d probably stop and pay attention.
Anyway, here’s a pic of the end result.
Isn’t that awesome? I just had a slice and it’s really good.
So that leaves me with one pint left to use up before the berries go bad. Any suggestions?
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3 comments
Angela says:
Mon. July 28, 2008 at 1:22 am (UTC -5 )
What a chef! I love strawberries, but I don’t know how much I’d like strawberry squares since I love lemon squares to death. But I’m glad you got to try out some new recipes!
Wegrit says:
Mon. July 28, 2008 at 5:45 am (UTC -5 )
That looks *really* good. I love strawberry shortcake though.
Jay says:
Mon. July 28, 2008 at 10:50 pm (UTC -5 )
The lemon squares recipe is easily changeable. I did orange a long time ago and the taste was really great. Thing is, if you use orange you have to remember that the juice of one orange is a lot more than what you’ll get out of two lemons–you’ll have to reduce the liquid. That’s what I’ll have to do if I want to give strawberry another go. Also consider that orange juice is a lot cloudier than lemon juice: it really changes the quality. I was just thinking…maybe a mint liqueur would be cool. With a bit of green food colouring you’d end up with something pretty cool.
Making the shortcake was pretty cool. I haven’t really worked with foaming up eggs in the past and it was interesting to see how much skill was needed to keep it all airy while folding everything in.