The Strawberries are Coming: Again, Almost Amanda's Strawberry Tart

I picked the first handful of garden strawberries this morning, marking the beginning of my 2014 berry season out in my yard. I am planning to make this pie again as soon as full production begins, hopefully within a week, if the sun comes out and it stays dry for a few days. My pal Brad may just get a homemade strawberry tart for his birthday dinner. Please enjoy this post from about a year ago. It's one of the best strawberry tarts you'll eat.

A day or so ago, I was ogling a beautiful peach tart over on Food52. Even Pinned it to make soon. Peaches, so far are not great, and a peach tart will have to wait a few weeks until the height of the season. What I do have is a small glut of homegrown strawberries, small sweet Mara des Bois. And Chuck has been asking for a strawberry pie since I brought in the first bowlful from the garden. Amanda Hesser wrote the recipe on Food52, and she got me when she said the recipe had been her mother's. I am a total sucker for family recipes. I started to read the comments, too and found that many other cooks, since the recipe is a couple of years old, used fruit other than peaches with great success.

I'd told Chuck there would be no strawberry pie since I'd used my last frozen homemade pie shell, and I refuse to use store-bought. He uses them all the time, but I won't. Any fool can make a decent filling; I rest my laurels on my butter and lard pie crust. So, with some trepidation I decided to try this press-in crust from Amanda's recipe that uses oil. Handed-down recipes are almost always good, and this is no exception. I made a few minor recipe changes, besides using strawberries, but it's still pretty much Amanda's mom's recipe, I think. Easy to toss together, for sure. So this version is for you, Amanda, and please thank your mom from all of us.

The best tip ever is in the video with the original recipe over on Food52: pat the crust into the pan from the rim toward the center. With a big tart like this, sometimes it feels like you won't have enough dough to make a nice rim if you start from the center out. This method totally eliminates the problem.

This strawberry tart is wonderful. The berries get an almost jammy consistency, but still have a fresh berry flavor. Please try to use good, local ripe berries for this; those huge, shipped-far, underripe berries just don't match the deliciousness of  the local ones.

Almost Amanda's Strawberry Tart
Too hot to cut yet, but, oh boy!

Almost Amanda's Strawberry Tart

Serves 8
Adapted slightly from Amanda Hesser's Peach Tart on Food52

Note: oils seeds are among the most genetically modified crops on the planet, and the only way to assure you are not using GMO oil is to use organic oils. Light flavored olive oils, are usually overly processed, too. So choose your ingredients accordingly. I use all organic products, but choosing organic oil is probably the most important.

Tools: 11"(or a 9") tart pan with removable bottom


1-1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon of sea salt
3/4 cups plus 1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup organic canola, corn or vegetable oil
2T light cream or organic coconut creamer
1/2  teaspoon almond extract
2 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter
1 quart small strawberries, hulled and halved lengthwise (about 2-1/2 lb)

1. Preheat oven to 425ºF.  In a bowl, mix together with a whisk, 1-1/2 cups flour, 1/4 tsp sea salt and 1 teaspoon sugar. In another bowl, whisk together the oil, the cream and the almond extract. Pour the oil mixture into the flour mixture and mix gently with a fork until it's all just combined and crumbly, don't over work it. Dump it into the tart pan, and working from the rim edge towards the center, pat the dough in place, about 1/8" thick.

2. Mix with your fingertips in a bowl, the 3/4 cup sugar, 3 tablespoons flour, 1/4  teaspoon of salt and the butter until it's crumbly and sandy looking.

3. Starting out at the rim, start placing the berry halves, cut side down, in tight concentric circles on top of the dough. Fill in gaps with smaller berries or tear off pieces of strawberry. Sprinkle all of the the sugar-flour mixture evenly over the top of the fruit, and bake for 35 to 45 (mine took 35) minutes until the pastry is lightly browned and the berries look bubbly and jam-like. Cool on a rack and serve at room temp or slightly chilled, with healthy dollops of whipped creme fraiche or whipped cream.

Fee, Fie, Foe Friday: It Was a Berry Short Season

All the Strawberry Jam with Vanilla and Lavender we'll get this year.

This is not actually a rant, just a complaint. And no recipe either. I know I have no control over the weather. Still, Momma Nature is a rough woman to contend with. Finally I have a good crop of strawberries and then we get about 7 inches of rain in less than a week. The result is mushy, moldy berries on the plants. Having already picked about 4 or 5 pounds, I can't say that we got none. We did get plenty to eat plain as fruit, and some berries made it into a strawberry tart, but there really wasn't enough to make as much jam as we'd like, or any to freeze. All the water, while its good for the tomato crop and most of the other plants in the vegetable garden, it has pretty much ruined any plans I had  for more berries. While these are everbearing strawberry plants, the largest batch comes in early June. So we're pretty much done.


It was a berry short season. Pun intended. What I've got to show for it is four really small jars of strawberry jam with vanilla and lavender. Was planning at least double that. If not triple. I won't post the recipe until I get to actually taste the jam, so don't ask. Cause who knows if it will pass the taste test? It's a mish mash of several recipes I found online, and while often that works, occasionally it doesn't. It may be too sweet for my taste; I like to taste more fruit than sugar. We'll see.


All I can say is gather ye strawberries while ye may...or something along those lines. Life is a berry short season.

Almost Amanda's Strawberry Tart

A day or so ago, I was ogling a beautiful peach tart over on Food52. Even Pinned it to make soon. Peaches, so far are not great, and a peach tart will have to wait a few weeks until the height of the season. What I do have is a small glut of homegrown strawberries, small sweet Mara des Bois. And Chuck has been asking for a strawberry pie since I brought in the first bowlful from the garden. Amanda Hesser wrote the recipe on Food52, and she got me when she said the recipe had been her mother's. I am a total sucker for family recipes. I started to read the comments, too and found that many other cooks, since the recipe is a couple of years old, used fruit other than peaches with great success.

I'd told Chuck there would be no strawberry pie since I'd used my last frozen homemade pie shell, and I refuse to use store-bought. He uses them all the time, but I won't. Any fool can make a decent filling; I rest my laurels on my butter and lard pie crust. So, with some trepidation I decided to try this press-in crust from Amanda's recipe that uses oil. Handed-down recipes are almost always good, and this is no exception. I made a few minor recipe changes, besides using strawberries, but it's still pretty much Amanda's mom's recipe, I think. Easy to toss together, for sure. So this version is for you, Amanda, and please thank your mom from all of us.

The best tip ever is in the video with the original recipe over on Food52: pat the crust into the pan from the rim toward the center. With a big tart like this, sometimes it feels like you won't have enough dough to make a nice rim if you start from the center out. This method totally eliminates the problem.

This strawberry tart is wonderful. The berries get an almost jammy consistency, but still have a fresh berry flavor. Please try to use good, local ripe berries for this; those huge, shipped-far, underripe berries just don't match the deliciousness of  the local ones.

Almost Amanda's Strawberry Tart
Too hot to cut yet, but, oh boy!

Almost Amanda's Strawberry Tart
Serves 8
Adapted slightly from Amanda Hesser's Peach Tart on Food52

Note: oils seeds are among the most genetically modified crops on the planet, and the only way to assure you are not using GMO oil is to use organic oils. Light flavored olive oils, are usually overly processed, too. So choose your ingredients accordingly. I use all organic products, but choosing organic oil is probably the most important.

Tools: 11"(or a 9") tart pan with removable bottom


1-1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon of sea salt
3/4 cups plus 1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup organic canola, corn or vegetable oil
2T light cream or organic coconut creamer
1/2  teaspoon almond extract
2 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter
1 quart small strawberries, hulled and halved lengthwise (about 2-1/2 lb)

1. Preheat oven to 425ºF.  In a bowl, mix together with a whisk, 1-1/2 cups flour, 1/4 tsp sea salt and 1 teaspoon sugar. In another bowl, whisk together the oil, the cream and the almond extract. Pour the oil mixture into the flour mixture and mix gently with a fork until it's all just combined and crumbly, don't over work it. Dump it into the tart pan, and working from the rim edge towards the center, pat the dough in place, about 1/8" thick.

2. Mix with your fingertips in a bowl, the 3/4 cup sugar, 3 tablespoons flour, 1/4  teaspoon of salt and the butter until it's crumbly and sandy looking.

3. Starting out at the rim, start placing the berry halves, cut side down, in tight concentric circles on top of the dough. Fill in gaps with smaller berries or tear off pieces of strawberry. Sprinkle all of the the sugar-flour mixture evenly over the top of the fruit, and bake for 35 to 45 (mine took 35) minutes until the pastry is lightly browned and the berries look bubbly and jam-like. Cool on a rack and serve at room temp or slightly chilled, with healthy dollops of whipped creme fraiche or whipped cream.

Fee, Fie, Foe, Friday: Berry Frustrating?

Well, Friday is my rant day, and I am going to rant.  (I am lucky to have this problem...) I have homegrown strawberries, just not enough to make jam. Because we keep eating them. Tough, huh?
I won't be picking any today since it's raining buckets, and will continue, thanks to the remnants of tropical storm Andrea feeding into the front we already have. Damn.

So I'm simply going to rant about having to find some delicious  use, and quickly for the berries I have. They're a variety, Mara des Bois, that is very fragile, and don't hold up well for storing. Which is why you rarely will ever see these in farmers markets.  I have to make something. Today. Bake something? Freeze? Oy. All of them are "work". Or fattening.

All our troubles should be like this. Berry frustrating!

Hmm. Enough here for two strawberry tarts.

Brown Sugar Roasted Strawberries with Vanilla

Brown Sugar Roasted Strawberries with Vanilla,
 and yep, in a big Weck Jar from Amy

I have this strawberry bed. It was completely unintentional; they came free with my seed order about three years ago. They didn't look like much, but the variety was called Mara des Bois, a French bred berry that is sweet like a woodland strawberry, and not quite as small, but easily cultivated. I plopped the half-dozen plants in an unused corner of the garden and promptly ignored them for the most part.

Few fruit the first season, and last year I DID feed them, but had so much trouble keeping them properly bird-netted that the birds won nearly all of the berries. This year I figured out a much simpler and effective way to net them, and with some compost and tending, we're getting a real crop. I picked a little over two pounds of deep red, sweet homegrown strawberries. More to come, too.  Strawberry plants do multiply and those original half-dozen have begat at least four dozen plants. I highly recommend the variety; Jung Seeds has Mara des Bois strawberry plants at a very reasonable price. You'll never look at one of those white cored, bland berries coming from the left coast quite the same way after you grow some at home.

Still, a couple of pounds of berries is quite a lot for the two of us to consume, and I'm really not ready to start freezing stuff yet. A few weeks ago I had a dessert in a local restaurant that was topped with roasted strawberries. Roasted berries were quite the thing a several years back, and I'd forgotten how roasting strawberries concentrates the flavors. It is also a great way to make a bounty of berries last in the fridge, unless you eat them all with a spoon right out of the jar. These are won-der-ful. Chuck really wanted me to make a pie, but there are no homemade pie crusts in my freezer and they're on my to-do list. Far down. But it did get me thinking. Suppose I doodle up the berries with some sugar and vanilla, roast them and then, if I make some quick tart shells later in the week I can just spoon in the roasted strawberries. And using a dark sugar like coconut or turbinado will add a rich, deep, roasty note of flavor. If you can't find either of those sugars, granulated Sugar in the Raw, or plain old granulated brown sugar will work. But even if I don't use the roasted berries in tarts, I can see a roasted strawberry fool (whipped cream and roasted strawberries) or even in a dish with a dab of creme fraiche or Greek yogurt.

Note: If you can't get local berries, wait until you can. Makes a huge difference.

Big flavor from just a few ingredients,
just make sure your ingredients are top-notch.

Brown Sugar Roasted Strawberries with Vanilla

2 lb. ripe local strawberries, stemmed, and halved if larger than 1"
4 tsp. vanilla bean paste
3/4 cup granular brown sugar (coconut, turbinado, or raw sugar)
pinch of sea salt

1. In a medium bowl, mix the vanilla bean paste, the brown sugar, and the salt until evenly mixed. Add the berries and stir gently until the berries are covered with the sugar mixture. Let the berry mixture stand for 5-10 minutes.

2. Preheat the oven to 450ºF. Spray a rimmed baking sheet lightly with cooking oil spray and set aside.

3. Spread the strawberries evenly in the prepared pan, including all the juices, and roast for 10 minutes. Stir gently and return to the oven for another 5 to 10 minutes until the tops of the berries are just beginning to caramelize. Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes.

Gorgeous, huh?

4. Carefully, spoon the berries into a heatproof jar, and pour the juices over top. If the juice is a bit too runny, you can reduce it over medium heat in a saucepan until it's as thick as you like before pouring over the jarred berries.

Makes about 3 cups, with juice.

BBQ and 102°: Amy's Sangria Saves the Day

Every year around Independence Day we have a big barbecue. All the friends, family and neighbors come heading down our driveway carrying  covered platters and pie carriers. Little ones, middle ones and the oldsters all hang out together in the yard and the patio, eating smoked brisket, pulled pork and everyone brings a side or dessert. So there is a lot of variety.  A TON of food. We all decided to scale it down a bit this year since the family is still reeling from my SIL's unexpected death. But there was still a ton of food. And a heat wave. 102°F.

Suddenly on Thursday I realized the BBQ was going to be INSIDE my air-conditioned house. The weather folks weren't going to be wrong. So that chicken we set up into the brine got smoked early (sorry no pictures as I was hurrying to beat the heat) on Friday. Then finished on the grill by CC, who braved thunder and lightning (no real rain to cool it down) to give it a nice crisp finish. But I'm ahead of myself. Having to move all of it IN, made me frazzled. Fourteen adults whining about the heat outside with the children  roaring around chasing the dog. Bedlam. I had plenty of wine, water, soda and juice...but nothing to cheer me up and add a little pizzaz to the proceeds. Amy saved the day. Her friend Janey makes a killer sangria, she said, and she'd email me the recipe. Really then, it's Amy's and Janey's Sangria, but who cares? It is fabulous. One glass, and bingo, no more frazzled.

Amy made me promise to not dootz around with the recipe, and I didn't really, except to add some seltzer to the jug. People would forget to add it to each glass, and it IS in the recipe. And only because it's got so much alcohol added to the wine and fruit, we'd all be flat-out before any of the food came off the grill. Sorry, Ames.

Don't wait for a BBQ to make this. Any gathering at all will welcome this kind of cool libation. Way too good, really.

White Sangria: Good way to beat the heat!

Note: You do need to add the citrus, and depending on the wine and fruit combo you use, perhaps a bit of sugar or honey. Made a double recipe. I used a 1.5 liter bottle of Chardonnay in each batch, plus, lemons, limes, blood oranges, strawberries, white peaches and mango. A peeled and sliced kiwi or two would be pretty, too, or cherries. Add what's nice and seasonal, but be sure to stick in plenty of citrus.  I served it on ice, since it was 102°F. Make it a day ahead, or at least 8 hours to let the flavors meld. 

Amy and Janey's Killer White Sangria

1 bottle chardonnay

1 c. triple sec, cointrou or grand marnier (triple sec most cost effective)

1 c. peach schnappes

Fresh fruit…especially lots of limes (squeeze in the limes…..cut up lemons, cut up oranges, apples, throw in berries...whatever is in season.

At this time of year, 1 orange, 1 lemon, one cut up lime for color is fine and pretty!

Add sparkling water in individual glasses so if there are leftovers the rest does not go flat.

"Anyone have a straw?"

The Bottomless Jar of Crème Fraîche

I wanted to re-post this because, well, it's MAJOR berry season, and there is nothing better than plain or lightly sweetened crème fraîche over fresh berries, or berry desserts. Then consider it over peaches, nectarines...Makes simple food what our family calls "RQ" – Restaurant Quality. Everyone is just so shocked that you can make this wonderful stuff so easily and cheaply at home. Enjoy!

I’m cheap. Well, sort of, but there are a few things I won’t spend a lot of money on even if I consider them essential. So many of my favorite cooking tools, my cars and my dogs have been bought used (except for the current dog), and even my husband is second-hand, although I DID get him in a kitchenware store. 

In the food department, I’m willing to pay good money for goodies like maple sugar and olive oil --- things I can’t or don’t have the time or skill to make myself, but it kills me how expensive something as delicious, easy to produce, and useful as crème fraîche can be when you like to use it by the glob.  It has a wonderful, nutty-tart flavor, it doesn’t separate when you boil it, makes a wonderful easy addition to pan sauces and can make a no-cook sauce in a flash with just a few herbs, spices and a dash of salt. It whips beautifully, and lightly sweetened, it is much better on many desserts than basic whipped cream. 

Sour cream doesn’t hold a candle to this stuff, except maybe in a baked potato or on top of a nacho. Crème fraîche is so simple, and soooo good!

Crème fraîche is one of those essential things. If there isn’t any in my fridge it requires an immediate trip to the market. Not to actually buy crème fraîche, just to get the ingredients to make it at home. I have bought the culture to make the real thing, and it does make a product closer to what I’ve eaten in France, but buttermilk, and pasteurized heavy cream are enough to make an endless supply, so I can wallow in the luxury of having as much as I want. When it's nearly all gone I can use the last bit in my jar to make more by transferring it to a small bowl, washing the jar thoroughly, mixing the remaining crème fraîche with two cups of cream and start the fermenting process again.  Fabulous and...cheap.

Time to start another batch of Crème Fraîche!

Homemade Crème Fraîche

1 pint of heavy cream pasteurized (NOT ultra pasteurized)

¼ cup of cultured buttermilk

Tools: spoon, measuring cup, and a very clean quart or liter glass jar with a cover

How: pour the ¼ cup of cultured buttermilk into the bottom of the jar, pour in the cream, stir gently and thoroughly, and either partially cover the jar, or leave off the lid and cover the top loosely with a clean cloth or a paper towel. Set it aside at room temperature for 8 to 36 hours (depending on how warm your kitchen is, and how thick you want the finished product). Stir gently once or twice a day if you think of it, and while you are stirring you can judge how thick it’s getting. Try not to lick the spoon, although I am totally unsuccessful at it. Just don't double-dip.

When it’s nearly as thick as you’d like (somewhere between the thickness of yogurt and commercial mayonnaise), seal the jar with the lid and pop it I the refrigerator. It’ll keep about two weeks, and if you notice that you’re down to your last half to quarter cup of the stuff, you can use your already made crème fraîche as the starter for your next batch. So you can fearlessly use up all that excess buttermilk in pancakes, pies and cakes, and keep that crème fraîche jar going just about forever. It’s bottomless. Really. 

Local & In Season circa 1921: Mrs. Scott's North American Seasonal Cook Book

I don't think Mrs. Scott was a movie star chef from her picture here.

I just read an interview with a local chef, and honestly, he seems to think he invented farm-to-table cooking, or seasonal, local cooking.  Not naming names here, but you probably have heard some famous chef preciously spouting how wonderful it all is. Well, I've got news for them: The hunter-gatherers invented it thousands of years ago. While it IS wonderful, and no doubt there are some creative new combinations, it's what good home cooks have been doing for a millennium at least.

What set me off on this is while rummaging around looking for my copy of Beard's "American Cookery", I happened on a copy of a cook book my mother got from my Dad's mom back in the 1940's. Published in 1921, "Mrs. Scott's North American Seasonal Cook Book" had everything in it a thrifty housewife would need to know to feed her family well. The book isn't in the best of shape; the pages are a little brown on the edges and there's a page missing from the front, but it proves that these guys didn't think up using what was in season and locally available. Not many people had refrigerators in 1921; iceboxes were the thing still for most. So stocking up with out of season fruit and vegetables wasn't even a consideration. No frozen vegetables, no Concord grapes in May. The Spring and Summer and Fall recipes are good and varied. Winter relying heavily on roots, grains and hard squashes is a little less appealing to our modern tastes; the menus seem heavy and stodgy.

Kinda dry compared to the latest offerings from today's TV  food people.

But here we are in late Spring,--- May into June meant blackberries, asparagus, spinach, strawberries, rhubarb, early peas, hard shell crabs, lamb and--whatever Mother Nature in her grand and infinite cycle has provided. The recipes in this old book are quaint. Simpler stews and soups, with far fewer seasonings than even the average American is used to now. Fruit puddings, uncommon foods like creamed scallions...which gives me an idea... but you get the picture. If you lived in Philadelphia, where this book was published, you traipsed down to the market and looked over what came in, possibly still by wagon, from New Jersey or from Lancaster County and planned your meals around that. We should be doing that now.

Everything old is new again. People are canning. Smoking bacon at home. Making bread.  It wasn't unusual 75 years ago for there to be a few chickens or a beehive in the backyard, or a rabbit hutch behind the garage. This old book is a good reminder that while we like to think we've reinvented the wheel, or at least discovered seasonal, local eating, our grannies really had it wired. Cook on!