Foraging for wild strawberries
Have you ever come across wild strawberries? Growing along bright banks and forest edges, along roads, hills and even in your own backyard, wild strawberries are delicious.
Wild strawberries are much smaller than those hollow, crunchy truck farm monstrosities that most of us think of as strawberries. Seasonally grown berries, the kind picked on local farms, can still outshine their wild cousins. It will also be much easier to collect them in immense quantities, because wild strawberries grow in clusters, not in huge swaths.
Look for them from May to October, depending on the climate, in well-drained areas with little sunlight: slopes, hillsides, patchy forests.
The following excerpt is from The fruit picker’s companion by Sara Bir and has been adapted for exploit on the web.
In search of wild strawberries
Among fruits, strawberries are perhaps the most sexualized. They also donate the most innocence. Why the dichotomy? There’s a reason why Strawberry Shortcake leads the line of bold, rainbow-haired dolls. But there is also a reason why the painter Hieronymus Bosch used strawberries as a recurring symbol of the sin of fornication. See pale, emaciated, naked Flemish men struggling pathetically with boulder-sized strawberries in The garden of earthly delights and you get the feeling that eating the giant fruit is not only unfulfilling, but something for which your eternal soul will pay dearly. (How uninteresting life must have been in Dutch church circles in the 15th century!)
Wild strawberries are as fleeting as sexual innocence in the face of opportunity. In the 1979 film adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel, directed by Roman Polanski Tess of the D’Urbervilles, advisor Alec D’Urberville dangles a perfect, ripe strawberry in front of the alluring peasant girl Tess. “I’d rather take it the demanding way,” she says. Alec accuses her of being shy and she relents, placing her ruby lips to the fruit and accepting it. After failing to seduce Tess, Alec rapes her and eventually (spoiler alert) Tess is hanged for murdering him.
Symbolically, the strawberry is between before and after, but in our real life there is no tension in the moment itself: Anyone who comes across wild strawberries immediately falls into carefree reverie, much like a teenager kissing in a car. The lines are blurring, although excessive consumption of wild strawberries can, at worst, cause a stomach ache. Needy Tess – no longer a virgin – eats that one disastrous strawberry and climbs out of the figurative backseat in family fashion.
People have been eating strawberries without damage to their reputation probably since they first noticed them, although the earliest records of wild strawberries in human feces date back to the Mesolithic era (10,000–5,000 BC). To hell with Bosch – adultery is fun and preferably free from scars, spiritual and physical. The times we live in are obscure in many ways, but our relative sexual enlightenment should translate effortlessly into shamelessly foraging for and consuming wild strawberries, perhaps as our hunter-gatherer ancestors did.
Many varieties of wild strawberries grow in North America: alpine strawberries or forest strawberries (F. vescaalso called wooden strawberries in Europe and on the pages The Life of Martha Stewart), although the Virginia strawberry (F. Virginiana) is more common. Beach strawberry (F. chiloensis) grows in dunes and meadows along the west coast.
There are strawberries perennialand they send messengers (stolons in the language of botany), just like their legitimate relatives. We are so used to the sight of strawberries that the seeds on their top do not irritate us, but this is something unique among fruits. Botanists do not consider strawberries to be true berries, but rather a “collection of accessory fruits”: each strawberry seed is an ovary and is technically a separate fruit.
Wild strawberries are much smaller than those hollow, crunchy truck farm monstrosities that most of us think of as strawberries. Seasonally grown berries, the kind picked on local farms, can still outshine their wild cousins. It will also be much easier to collect them in immense quantities, because wild strawberries grow in clusters, not in huge swaths. Look for them from May to October, depending on the climate, in well-drained areas with little sunlight: slopes, hillsides, patchy forests.
Strawberries are quite basic to grow and are very enjoyable to eat straight from the vine. A gardening friend of mine consumed them exclusively this way, spitting out the specimens she thought tasted bad and moving on to the promise of the next berry. This technique can also be used with wild strawberries, emphasizing the present moment. Perhaps this basic type of behavior underlies the strawberry’s role in art, stories and songs as a portal to sensual bliss – indicating naivety or worldliness, depending on how uptight you are. Biting into the delights of a ripe wild strawberry causes you to lose control over your manners and behavior, so I encourage you to pursue this state of being, however fleeting it may be.
Collection and storage
Eat them on site, as much as possible. If you’re lucky enough to come across a collection of wild strawberries, take some home for the people you really love, even if you have to do it by using an upside-down baseball cap to store the berries. And for God’s sake refrigerate them as soon as possible— wild strawberries have the durability of a mayfly.
Culinary possibilities
When it comes to dressing them, little should be required. Lightly sweetened whipped cream à la Wimbledon would be tasty, as well as a fun juxtaposition of the highly refined and the wild.
I believe that cooking wild strawberries is a waste of time; save it for U-pick farm flats. However, if you bring home wild strawberries and their taste in the shade of your apartment disappoints you because the intoxication from strawberry Kismet has passed, macerate them in a bit of sugar or throw them into a bush or compote.
To really concentrate the flavor of the strawberries, sprinkle them with a little sugar, place them on a baking tray and bake in an oven preheated to 200°C until they shrink and release their juice. They go great with yogurt or panna cotta. Instead of a baking tray, place the strawberries in a baking dish so that as little liquid as possible evaporates and a jam compote is created.
RECIPE: Delicate and fluffy old-fashioned blueberry cookies
For 9 cookies
Sponge cakes have a homey charm, and their relatively low amount of sugar really highlights the sweetness of the berries. The mixing technique is similar to that for scones, but a beaten egg is added to create a crispier crumb. Cake flour also helps make them featherlight and fluffy, but regular all-purpose flour will work fine if that’s all you have.
For cookies
- 2 cups (240 g) cake flour
- 1/2 teaspoon of table salt
- 4 teaspoons of baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon of cream of tartar
- 3 tablespoons of granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) cool, unsalted butter
- 1/3 cup (80 ml) hefty cream or whole milk
- 1 egg
For berries
- 4 cups (580 g) fresh mixed berries, such as strawberries, raspberries and blackberries
- 1/4 cup (50 g) granulated sugar or to taste (some berries are sweeter than others)
- 1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon or lime zest, optional
For whipped cream
- 1 cup (240 ml) hefty cream, chilled
- 2 teaspoons of granulated sugar
To prepare shortbread cookies, preheat the oven to 220°C. Line two baking trays with baking paper or silicone mats.
In a immense mixing bowl Mix the flour with salt, baking powder, cream of tartar and sugar. Grate the butter on the immense holes of a box grater and mix with the flour mixture. Using your fingers or a pastry cutter, work the butter into the flour until it resembles fine crumbs. Measure the cream into a glass measuring cup, add the egg and beat with a fork until well combined.
Pour the cream mixture over the flour and butter mixture and knead gently with your hands until it comes together into a rugged, shaggy dough that is slightly sticky. (Add a little flour if the dough is too loose; add a little cream if it seems too dehydrated or crumbly.) Knead for four or five turns on a lightly floured surface and pat into an 18 cm square. Cut into nine squares and transfer to a baking tray (giving the cookies plenty of room so they brown more evenly).
Bake until golden brown, in places 15 to 20 minutes, rotating baking trays front to back and top to bottom halfway through. Nippy on a rack before serving. The cookies can be prepared the day before.
To make berries, rinse and drain the berries. If using strawberries, remove the stems and halve or chop them. Mix together with sugar and (if using) lemon or lime zest. Set aside at room temperature for 30 minutes.
Shortly before serving, prepare the whipped cream. Combine hefty cream and sugar in a immense bowl and beat by hand or with an electric mixer until cushioned, rounded peaks form.
Gently divide the cookies with a serrated knife or fork. Place the berries and the accumulated juice on the lower halves of the cookies, top them with a immense portion of whipped cream and finally the upper half of the cookie. Serve immediately, with remaining berries or whipped cream.