My favourite way to eat a strawberry is directly from the potager. Still warm from the summer sunshine, picked from its tender stalk and enjoyed on the spot, but when the home production is in a lull, then I head to the market.
A quick walk around the market stands, picking out fruit and vegetables for the week ahead, then back in the car with a full basket of produce. Once I set off there is always a strawberry, or two, that doesn’t make it home. Somewhere between the market stall and the car, my hand finds its way into the punnet and takes the one on top, still warm from sitting in the sun. It seems only fair. Someone has to check.
A good strawberry gives itself away at once. Cut it in half and it should be deep red all the way through — no pale core, no white shoulders, no watery centre pretending to be fruit. It should be sweet, obviously, but more than that it should be perfumed. That scent is the whole point. You can smell a really good strawberry across a kitchen, and no amount of clever growing can fake it.
The very best ones, of course, never see a market at all. They come from the potager, picked in the middle of the afternoon when they are almost too warm to be refreshing, eaten standing up between the rows with the stalks dropped straight back onto the soil. I am not sure that counts as cooking. I am not sure it needs to. Gathered into a basket alongside the other crops, be it beans, blackberries or tomatoes.
Indoors, I do very little to them. Halved, scattered with a spoonful of sugar, left for half an hour to reflect and soften and make their own syrup … that is enough. Serve them alongside a lemon cake, or a lemon cheesecake, and you will be instantly popular. Strawberries and lemon are a match made in heaven: the sharpness lifts the sweetness, the sweetness rounds the sharpness, and neither one has to shout.
Rhubarb does much the same job, if you have it. Stewed pink and tart, with strawberries stirred through at the last minute so they keep their shape.
And then it is over for another year. Which is rather the point of it. Because who would want to eat the same thing all year around!
