Solstice Food
Asparagus, strawberries and summer
June, as my very observant friend Peggy says, is Maine’s great secret. And she’s right—after a long, tortuous and tortured winter-into-spring, these blissful days of greening woods and fields, fragrant lilacs, peonies budding into their annual glory, early dawns and very late twilights, warm afternoons lifted by onshore breezes, still free of the hordes of tourists to be dealt with next month (and I’ll take black flies over tourists—much less contentious, much easier to deal with) when they crowd the downtown streets looking for lobster rolls and T shirts with Maine messages. This is the time we savor just for ourselves, before the summer season gets underway.
What’s to eat in June? What’s not, a skillful scavenger might ask. But the stars are aligned this month for asparagus and strawberries, twin luminaries of June and here we are, more than halfway through the month and both these prodigies will soon disappear. It’s time, quite honestly, to binge until. . . well, does anyone ever get sick of strawberries? Of asparagus? Not when they’re only around for a few short weeks and wise cooks offer them up as often as possible.
Wise cooks also know—or at least they should be reminded—that the best thing to do with both these early summer champions is to keep it simple. I have to remind myself of that every year.
Asparagus, for instance.
Back in April, tempted by all the online overkill to advance the asparagus season, I made an unwise move, foolishly picking up a bunch of stalks in a local supermarket produce section. This asparagus was from Peru and had I been paying attention I never would have bought it. But in my desperation to push the envelope, I fell for it. And, reader, it was awful. Utterly without flavor except for a distinct hint of bitterness that lingered unpleasantly on the palate.
Live and learn!
How has it taken me this long to grasp that the only asparagus worth eating is the asparagus growing in your own garden or your neighbor’s or on a nearby farmer’s plot? Asparagus, fresh, crisp, still a little dewy with morning freshness, snipped off with a satisfying crack at the base, and preferably eaten out of hand, right there, standing in the garden, listening to June bird song, contemplating the way all things relate to each other and how connected we are to place and time and space—that’s when asparagus is at its best.
And if not that, then simply poached in lightly salted, robustly boiling water, the stalks trimmed back to their most tender point, occasionally, when necessary, gently peeled with a vegetable parer. Simmered until just tender, drained, and served immediately with a dressing of either finest, fruitiest olive oil or melted butter and a spritz of lemon. That’s all it takes.
The most elaborate presentation I’ll allow is the tender stalks served on toast, possibly with a poached egg on top to crack with a fork and make a sauce for the vegetable. Or turned in oil or butter in a shallow gratin dish, liberally sprinkled with grated cheese and bread crumbs, dotted with more dabs of butter, and run under the broiler briefly to toast the top.
What more is needed? Possibly the simplicity of an asparagus risotto, the recipe for which you will find by scrolling down past the pay wall.
As for strawberries,
that other solstice attraction, I urge similar restraint. Plain strawberries, hulled, halved if necessary, tossed in a bowl with a bit of sugar to bring out the flavor, a spritz of lemon and perhaps a few drops of the very finest
aceto balsamico tradizionale di Modena, the kind that comes in a distinctive tear-shaped bottle and costs a small fortune. On gustiamo.com’s website, it’s upwards of $85 for a small bottle, but a drop or two is all that’s necessary to extract its incredible impact. It’s like a fine perfume, you don’t splash it on after a shower but rather dab it at critical heat points (wrists, temples, behind the ears) before venturing forth for the evening. Just so, two or three drops of aceto balsamico tradizionale on top of lightly sugared strawberries takes the fruit to an even more exalted plain.
Or pile those berries on the bottom half of a lightly sweetened buttermilk biscuit, top with sweetened whipped cream, the top half of the biscuit, more berries, more whipped cream and you have a fine old-fashioned strawberry shortcake, the way my mother used to make it for supper in June. That was the whole menu, just strawberry shortcake, punto e basta, as she did not say. It was rich and sweet and full of fresh flavors, just right on a warm June evening.
The only other thing I might suggest with strawberries when they have reached their June perfection is to take any leftovers and boil them down with sugar to make jam. Don’t even think about bottling it for winter, just put it out on the breakfast table and it will disappear almost within moments,.
And then, for the truly adventurous, there’s a surprising—I could almost say astonishing—risotto, a strawberry risotto. This recipe (for which scroll down) comes from my daughter Sara’s book, Olives and Oranges, and it was actually inspired by a strawberry risotto we consumed avidly at lunch in Rome back in the day, in a tiny trattoria that was on the children’s route home from their school in Piazza di Spagna. I never saw risotto di fragole in any other restaurant so I do not deem it a “Roman” recipe but rather an inspiration of the chef at da Pietro on the via dei Piannellari. Sara, in whose memory the risotto lives forever, developed this recipe first at her New York restaurant, Porsena, and carried it with her when she moved to Maine.
These great seasonal risotto recipes are available below the paywall for paid subscribers. Please consider joining that list to get the entire post. And thank you!
