Something rather different today and seasonal to boot. It is the strawberry season and pick your own does seem to result in the accumulation of very large quantities of fruit. I guess it always looks like less in a field. Indeed, there have been a few cries for help on Twitter and elsewhere, as people contemplate a huge pile of strawberries at home, wondering if they can possibly eat them. My late father had three excellent solutions.
In no particular order:
Freeze them for winter eating: strawberries freeze really well.
Make jam.
Make a sorbet.
This last one is my favourite. Ices are great and when really full of excellent fruit are something else again. So here is my Dad’s recipe, which works very well and is very simple.
The following is per pound of fruit, scaling up is easy.
1. Clean strawberries; wash, dry, remove stalk.
2. To 5 oz of granulated sugar, add 6 tablespoons of water.
3. Heat sugar and water until sugar dissolved. Boil for 1 min, then let the syrup cool to room temperature.
4. Purée 1 lb strawberries and add (i) 1 tablespoon of freshly pressed orange juice; (ii) 1 tablespoon freshly pressed lemon juice; (iii) cold syrup and mix.
5. Pour into containers and freeze on fastest regime, stirring once or twice to avoid separation of water from the sugar, etc.
6. Enjoy at your leisure.
As with any recipe, this is actually chemistry and there are some interesting principles at work here.
In metric terms (the only ones I understand)
Cold syrup: 142 g sugar + 6 tablespoons of water
1 lb is close enough to 1/2 kg
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