It's the Berries

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My Maine kitchen is filled these days with the fragrance of strawberries. Open the screen door any bright summer morning and your nose will detect that unmistakeable perfume. Why is it so intense? I think it comes from the way strawberries ripen, slowly, slowly, and then quite suddenly, bursting out in the longest daylight hours of the year, days that filled with warmth and light of the solstice sun, followed by nights that are cool and slightly damp. Like the grapes that go into a great wine, that temperature variation produces sweetness, complex flavors and the antioxidants that make the berries not only tasty but also a source of health and wellness. The Reverend Doctor Butler is said to have said that God doubtless never made a better berry than the strawberry, but I’ll go him one better, doubtless God never made a better strawberry than the ones that grow in Maine.

And this is just the beginning of berry season. The strawberries may soon be gone (except for day-neutral berries that don’t rely on long sunny solstice days to ripen), but there will be other berries to replace them—raspberries, blackberries, black raspberries, and very soon the small, intensely flavorful Maine wild blueberries which, despite the name, are widely cultivated all along the coast and in the Canadian maritimes too. July, I’m told, is National Wild Blueberry Month although right now, just before the Fourth, the season has yet to begin.

wild strawberries by a trail through the woods

Berries and summer go hand in hand, the one evoking the other as naturally as, well, as strawberries and cream. Venture farther afield and you’ll find thimbleberries and sour serviceberries in the Colorado Rockies, marionberries in the Pacific Northwest, or cloudberries from Newfoundland (where they’re called bakeapples, who knows why?) along with partridgeberries, the Newfie name for lingonberries.

What’s the best way to eat these miracles of flavor? Sun-warmed and by the handful, free for the asking in an abandoned patch by the side of a hiking trail? Rinsed, sliced and dusted with powdered sugar or sprinkled with a little balsamic vinegar or vintage Port and served in a chilled silver cup with a dollop of crème fraîche? Tucked between the sugary crusts of a berry pie, hot from the oven, the juices seeping over the top?

Old-fashioned cookbooks are full of simple, traditional recipes for all these berries. Many of such have been half-forgotten in our constant, insatiable rush to be new. But what, for instance, could be more, served for tea on the shady kitchen porch? It’s utter simplicity: berries crushed with a fork and sweetened before being folded into thick whipped cream, often with a touch of vanilla added. Fresh strawberries and raspberries are perfect for fool, but acidic gooseberries, if you can find them, should be simmered in a little sugar and water before crushing. (Gooseberries, traditional in the UK, are hard to find in North America.) Take it one step further and layer the mixture between crisp, crumbled meringues and you’ll have what Brits call, with insouciance, Eton mess.

And then there’s strawberry shortcake, properly made, with sweetened baking-powder biscuits, warm from the oven, split open, buttered, piled with lightly crushed, sugared berries and mounded with whipped cream. A drop or two of vanilla to flavor the whipped cream is permitted, but nothing else should interfere with the balance of flavors. Some years ago, I published an old family recipe in the New York Times and year after year after year, the Times continues to republish that recipe in strawberry season. If you have a subscription, you can find it here, and if you don’t have a subscription, you can find my slightly re-written version here. If you think of strawberries as subjects for dessert, consider that in Maine, during our short strawberry season, strawberry shortcake is often served as a glorious supper dish, to be enjoyed all on its own, magnificently.

Strawberry shortcake, a seasonal treat at Beth’s Market in Warren, Maine

There’s another strawberry supper dish that I experienced back in Rome many years ago. It has since become a family favorite and it stars on the menu at my daughter’s restaurant. This strawberry risotto was featured at a sweet little family-run trattoria called Da Piero, tucked away in the warren of cobble-stoned streets between Piazza Navona and the Tiber. Da Piero was conveniently on the route we followed, the children and I, walking home from school, and conveniently timed for a proper Roman lunch since schools back then closed for the day at 1 p.m. The recipe comes from Sara’s book, Olives and Oranges, and, as she says in the head note, “strange as it sounds, this is a wonderful, deeply flavored dish that is not at all sweet.” I try to make it at least once every year during Maine strawberry season and it takes me right back to those ancient streets, those bubbling fountains, those crumbling walls of Vecchia Roma, stained with ochre and terracotta, burnt sienna and madder rose, which is the actual color of this dish.

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