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It's finally strawberry season here in Ohio and our patch has us drowning in fresh strawberries (one of the better ways to drown, IMHO).  There are the mandated few things to make every year from strawberries, like jam and jelly, but I wanted to open up a discussion on everyone's favorite ways to use fresh strawberries.

One unusual recipe I love which we make each year is a strawberry pizza sauce (savory, not dessert pizza!)  The recipe is here at the GQ website, and it's from Ubuntu restaurant in CA.  I recently made Nick Malgieri's strawberry rhubarb pie from How to Bake and it was really fantastic.

Anyone who grows strawberries knows that it's always a race to make use of them before they become mushy, right?  We toss them in salads, eat them with our cereal, and make strawberry shortcakes but do you have any other really spectacular recipes that make the most of the bowls of fresh strawberries we've got coming in???

The Fresh Strawberry Pie in the May issue of Cook's Illustrated is truly spectacular.  I made the first pie for Easter dinner and all cakes were ignored until the pie was consumed.  Hoping to finally get a piece myself, I made two pies for another family dinner party.  Again the pies disappeared.  I used the Cook's Illustrated pie crust with vodka.  Easy but it does take time. The shell can be baked ahead. The strawberry filling is simple but should be done only a few hours in advance to chill.  Serve with whipped cream.  The secret to the filling is Sure-Jell for low-sugar in the pink box.

Mary Frances

This isn't exactly a "recipe", but we freeze strawberries (and store-bought grapes, pineapple, cantalope, papaya, mango, other berries) for smoothies. I just cut the fruits into a suitable size, freeze on a pizza pan, and bag. We also buy bananas on sale (reduced because they are getting old), peel and halve them, and freeze them. (Smoothy recipe: a big spoon of yogurt, a big spoon of ricotta, 1 banana, two kinds of fruit, and about a cup of almond milk.  Or anything else you think you'd like in it.)  This way, we've always got enough fruit in the freezer for breakfast. A side effect is that we've always got fruit for baking, too. 

There's a great recipe for strawberry/rhubarb compote in "Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker" cookbook by Beth Hensperger.  Fresh strawberries and rhubarb with sugar and splash of lemon juice cooked on low for 3 hours.  It's fabulous with yogurt, on oatmeal, etc...and freezes well, too!

Best of all, it's super easy.

Hey thanks for the ideas everyone!

Mary Frances, what an intriguing idea to use vodka in a pie crust.  I don't have a subscription to CI so would you mind telling me why they settled on that additional ingredient?  Does it help make the crust flaky?

Vanessa, I love the luxury of having home grown strawberries all year for smoothies and whatever else.  Its usually just what i want to eat after a workout!  Nice idea with the almond milk, I'll give it a try.

ccav, I love Beth Hensperger and would totally trust her compote recipe.  We made some compote the other day, but it was mostly rhubarb and just a handful or two of strawberries.  I put it in my yogurt and granola the other day and WOW, so good.

I made a great strawberry ice cream the other night.  It was less sweet than I expected, but the flavor was unreal!  I think next up is a fresh strawberry tart because I've never made one and there's no time like the present.

Sorry to be late in answering your question, jzanger, about using vodka in pie crust. Cook's Illustrated: "Using vodka, which is just 60 percent water, gave us an easy-to-roll crust recipe with less gluten and no alcohol flavor, since the alcohol vaporizes in the oven." The crust is indeed crisp. Ingredients include butter and shortening,  flour,  vodka and cold water plus a little salt and sugar. You need to follow their instructions for several cooling trips to the fridge. If you are already a good crust maker, you probably don't require another pie crust recipe. But some of us need all the help there is.

Mary Frances

A strawberry recipe I tried recently is Roasted Strawberries from Super Natural Every Day by Heidi Swanson. It's like a healthy fresh jam sweetened with only a bit of maple syrup. The recipe is featured here: http://leitesculinaria.c...ries.html#disqus_thread. I didn't have the port, so I left it out. I increased the recipe to a quart of strawberries, and it made 1/2 pint of roasted strawberries. I served them with Swanson's millet muffins (also in Super Natural), and they were delicious!

I had such success with the strawberry recipe, I tried using blackberries. Two of the small cartons of blackberries will yield 1/2 pint of roasted blackberries. This was also yummy! And I'm not one that experiments with recipes much, but the strawberries were too good not to try the same technique with other berries. Wondering if it will work with peaches... I'm going to try that just as soon as the local peaches come in.

Mari

Earlier this week I made a Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp from Ina Garten's How Easy is That? (page 214).  It was very easy (duh!) and very delicious.  I'd give it 4 stars.  The strawberries were from my local farmers market and, sadly, I was told that these were the last for the season.  This recipe made very good use of them.  Served over Haagen-Dazs Vanilla ice cream, although also wonderful on its own.  And it was very good for breakfast the next morning ;)

Looks like there's a Strawberry/Rhubarb theme going here - I love the combination and just came across this recipe in today's New York Times, which includes ginger another favorite ingredient.   Gingered Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie by Molly Birnbaum - also read the interesting article associated with it.   Molly lost her sense of smell just before going to cook school - written a book about her experience of regaining it.  Season to Taste.   I haven't been able to try out the pie yet - just another 6 months until our strawberry season!