Lori Longbotham - Luscious Berry Desserts

First thanks to Bill LeBlond, Amy Treadwell, Judith Sutton, Emma Star Jensen, George Dolese, Elisabet der Nederlanden, and James Carrier. Many thanks to Jerry Goldman; Steve, Liz, and Sarah; Auntie Jean; Ellen McGill; and the Perrys.

My gratitude for good times and frst-rate humor to Deborah Mintcheff, Barbara Ottenhoff, Barbara Howe, Jean Galton, Marie Regusis, Leigh and Joanna, Sabra Turnbull, Sarah Mahoney, Carol Kramer, Lisa Troland, Rosie and Sprocket, Val Cipollone, Tracey Seaman, Jim Standard, Jennifer Gregory, Sharon Bowers, Mary Goodbody, Tish Boyle, Kathy Blake, David Bailey, Amy Albert, Kim Masibay, Debby Goldsmith, Susan Westmoreland, Cathy Lo, Rosanne Toroian, Susie Quick, Frances Largeman, Eileen Runyan, Lisa Comegna, Jena Myers and her parents, Moira Dixon, Scott Smiley, Robert Martien, Herb and June, and Jon and Debby.

for sarah nauli longbothamyoure the berries!

Berries, eh? Theres good cheer when theres berries.
CHARLES DICKENS, The Haunted Man

Berries are stunningly gorgeous and elegant, they combine well with other dessert makins, and everyone adores them. In fact, no fruits are more well loved or better for you than beautiful berries. Or more versatilethese small wonders are the crown jewels of the fruit world and one of natures greatest gifts. Within each berry lies a multitude of different favors and textures that can be drawn out to do whatever you, as a cook, want them to do.

Im the first to admit you dont need complicated or fancy recipes for berries. Simply pile plump ripe berries in a beautiful bowl and add plain or flavored , such as lemon verbena or ginger. A bowl of strawberries on the stem served with bowls of sour cream and brown sugar was the height of sophistication when I was a child. Now I might choose crme frache and dark Muscovado sugar, with its toffee-like flavor.

, and many others. I think youll be very happy with them.

While I love desserts, I dont really like just sweetness without a contrast to it. Sweet and tart, sweet and bitter, even sweet and hot make me much happier than just sweet. And that is the very reason I adore berries and berry desserts. (And the reason Im crazy about lemon desserts and dark chocolate desserts.) Ripe berries naturally have a good balance of sweet and tart, and berry desserts present a freshness, a beauty, and a celebratory feeling offered by few others. Think blueberry pie at Labor Day or strawberry shortcake on the Fourth of July.

Luscious Berry Desserts offers recipes using the berries I consider to be the big four strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and their cousins, and blueberries. The recipes are fexible, and berry substitutions are encouraged. Please use what you have, the more local the better, depending on where you live and whats growing nearby. There are no cranberry recipes here because they arent interchangeable with the other berries and they come to us in a totally different season. And I havent included recipes for gooseberries or fresh currants, because they are only rarely available to us.

While I recommend berries at the top of their game, at the height of their season, I must say that many times in the last several years Ive been drawn, way out of season, to the fragrance of ripe berries in my local greengrocerand have been very pleased with the berries after getting them home. I do believe there are berries around much of the time that can make us surprisingly happy, even if the calendar tells us they shouldnt be so good.

One of my most memorable mornings ever was picking strawberries with my friend Barbara on a warm summer day in Maine. We literally lay down among the berries, picked dozens, and ate more. We were giddy and exhilarated at the thought of actually getting all the strawberries we wanted, and slightly guilty at the pleasure. For who has ever really had enough strawberries? There is no doubt strawberries are best eaten in the patchthe warmth from the sun makes them even more lush and juicy. But if you dont have a handy patch, try local farmers markets for very fne berries. When berries are sold near to where they grow, it means the fruit has been allowed to ripen fully on the bush, which increases both the sugar content and the favor tremendously.

It would be very difficult for me to choose one as my favorite berry. My most beloved seems to be the one Im eating, cooking, or thinking about at the moment. Ill think of raspberries, and Im sure they are my favorite. Their favor explodes in my mouth and is as big as it gets.

But then I think of strawberries: there is nothing better than the simple bliss of eating strawberry dessertsshortcakes, ice creams, pies, and tarts. Just their faint come-hither fragrance can fill me with memories of simpler times, and finding a whole patch or punnet that is strawberry through and through, and none with tasteless, wooly white centers. Ripe blackberries and all their cousins have great favor, with a perfect balance of sweet and tart, and are amazingly juicy. They remind me of rural life, berry gathering, and living totally with the seasons. Then there are blueberries. Whats better than a double-crust blueberry pie, a cobbler or a grunt, or warm blueberry sauce on ice cream? I cant, at the moment, think of anything.

When I was growing up, we had a small patch of strawberries outside our back door, conveniently located for grabbing a handful for morning cereal. I would dash out with my full bowl to top it with berries, and it was a little bit of paradise. Not only were the plants beautiful, with their graceful little white flowers, but the berries were warm and very fragrant in the morning sun. Tiny little things, they were big in perfume and favor because thats what they were grown for, not bred for shipping. And because of them, I have always gravitated to small strawberries and am convinced that the smaller the berry, the sweeter and more intense their favor will be. So, no matter where you get them, look for small scarlet strawberries. And remember that local berries are riper, tastier, and less expensive than those that have more frequent-flier miles than you do. Also, the closer they are to market, the less damage theyre likely to suffer in transit.

For me, strawberries are the foremost berry. They are almost everyones favorite, but beyond being simply the best, in most places they are the frst berries (and sometimes the frst fruit) to appear each spring. They are the most widely grown of all berries, the glamour queen and summers brightest jewel. Because of their radiant beauty, strawberries also make appealing fresh decorations and garnishes for just about any dessert.

Strawberries are members of the botanical family of Rosaceae, the rose family. They are one of the oldest fruits, and excavations of Swiss lakes have revealed strawberry seeds and fossilized berries dating from the Iron Age. In Roman times, both Virgil and Ovid wrote of gathering fragra, the old Latin name for strawberries and the root of its present generic name, Fragaria. (Their name says quite a bit about their fragrance.) The gorgeous heart-shaped fruits range from the tiny fingernail-size wild varieties to the extra-large cultivated strawberries, and their favor varies according to variety and ripeness. An unusual and distinctive feature of strawberries is that the seeds grow on the outside of the fruit, rather than inside. The approximately two hundred seeds on the average berry give a certain very pleasant texture.