Consider the first fruit of the season and then celebrate it! Here in Southwest France, strawberries are the first ripe seasonal fruit appearing around the first of April, initially from giant hydroponic greenhouses and soon enough from the poly-tunneled, straw-bedded fields. At this point, I am not a purist; the firsts are the firsts. And I want to taste, even if imperfect, that avant-goût of the sugar-sweet taste of summer to come.
Buy a box (no matter the cost) to eat in the car. Or wait until you get home. Don’t bother trimming the greens off, but using that as a little handle, douse them with a sprinkle of sugar and pop them in your mouth. That is what will be coming down the tractored-lanes by the thousands, and millions, as the strawberry season begins to flourish. Save your shortcakes and fraisiers, charlottes, sorbets, and confitures until the sun has warmed the earth more, the sugars are more pronounced, and the juices run freely.
Strawberries are grown all round the neighborhood here, small farms and potager gardens. I have some plants near my kitchen window, so I can grab them before the slugs do.
The Truc (or trick) just now is to taste the first fruit with the longing and anticipation of all the Spring and Summer days to come. Soon, as the ripen into sweeter abundance, I’ll share one of my favorite recipes for celebrating the ripe strawberry season, a simple Gratin de Fraises with Sabayon de Champagne and a quatre-quarts pound cake.
Finding France: A Culinary Memoir is an edible tale of a young traveling cook who gets stuck on a barge in France and stays to become a wise old woman with a head full of ideas on French food and cooking. Kate Hill—cook, teacher, mentor, and author—invites you into her world of French food as she learned over three dozen years of practice in the rural farmlands of Gascony. Read more here.
Kate Hill is the author of over a dozen cookbooks, including A Culinary Journey in Gascony, Cassoulet: A French Obsession, and A Gascon Year Series of 12 recipe and story volumes (available here). Published in America’s Best Food Writing 2019, curated by Samin Nosrat, Kate Hill has written for Saveur Magazine and The Los Angeles Times. Kate and her cooking, butchery, and charcuterie programs have been featured in Bon Appétit, Food and Wine, Condé Nast Traveler, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Boston Globe, Faire magazine, My French Country Home, and countless websites.
I know what you mean about the excitement of the first strawberries in France 🍓 I saw them at the farmer’s market yesterday and they looked so juicy and delicious. But they were priced at 10 euros for a handful, so I thought I better try to hold out just a bit longer or I’ll go broke!
In Oregon, known for its berries, the season is much later but we do haved imported strawberre\ies from the south or greenhouses It is the hot days and cool nights that make our berries so special so I prefer to wait but my hysband was swayed by the sight of the bright red berry and brought snoe home I amended them with a few dashes of Grand Marnai and a tabs. of sugar It helped