The One About Strawberries

There's a cycle to eating seasonally.

Step one: Wait in restless anticipation for <insert food here> to be available.

Step two: When <insert food here> finally becomes available, gorge yourself until you can't bear to look at it anymore.

Step three: Wait another eight or nine or ten months until <insert food here> finally comes around again.

Of course, there is an alternative extra step - Put up <insert food here> so that you can continue to enjoy it when it is no longer in season.

For me, this food is currently strawberries.

What is it about fresh strawberries? I don't even bother buying the grocery store versions anymore. Strawberries at the store aren't so delicate that they bruise their tender little bodies merely sitting on top of one another in a container. Strawberries at the store don't seduce you with aromas that entice you like a mauve-colored, come-hither, beckoning hand from a Bugs Bunny cartoon, stroking you under your nose as you pass by. Let's face it - strawberries at the store suck.

The strawberry cycle started two weeks ago, when a table of the delectable fruit lured me into another farm's tent at the Falls Church farmers market. I got a quart, and spent the rest of market surreptitiously opening the cooler where I had stashed it, the better to enjoy its scent as it billowed out of solitary cooler confinement. I spent the following week enjoying strawberries on my oatmeal, my granola, and - most memorably - eaten for dessert in a pool of our own yellow-tinted cream.

So when, at Arlington's farmers market this past Saturday, our neighbors started putting out basket after basket of the little red fruit, I was overcome, and purchased half a flat. I used some of it to make strawberry compote to top my traditional boyfriend-is-visiting breakfast, the German Pancake, and I reserved a bit more so I could luxuriate in strawberries and cream later that week, but the bulk of it ended up in little quilted 8-oz jars.

Preserves - the perfect way to make sure that I can get my strawberry fix any time, any place. And they're so easy to make that it's actually a little disturbing - equal weights strawberries and sugar, cut up and mixed with the juice of a lemon, and left alone overnight, then heated up in two-cup increments and ladled into the appropriate sterilized jars and boiled for ten minutes, leaving me with five jewel-bright additions to my tiny kitchen.

But, naturally, I dropped my first piece of strawberry preserve-bedecked toast, sticky side down, in the garage the next morning after only eating two bites.

Mango Chutney Madness

Due to an abundance of mangos in last week's Green BEAN box, I decided to ignore the obvious impossibility of mangos in Indiana in March (or EVER), and go balls out by making an exotic mango chutney.*

I looked at a few different recipes online before making my decision. Most of the recipes had what seemed to me to be an appalling amount of sugar - up to 2 cups, in one case. The original recipe I used called for half a cup of brown sugar, which I further reduced to a third of a cup. Mangos and raisins are sweet naturally, and along with the apple juice I figured the chutney would be cloyingly saccharine enough to suit even my sweet tooth.** I was also lacking a few ingredients (e.g. fresh ginger), but I made do with what I had available in the pantry.

 Courageous Mango Chutney

Ingredients

3 fresh mangos, ripe but not too soft

3 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp red pepper flakes

1 medium red onion, diced

1 cup apple juice

1/2 cup cider vinegar

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 1/2 tbsp yellow curry powder

1 1/2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

Salt and pepper

1/2 cup raisins

Cut the mangos into medium to large chunks.

In a 12-inch skillet, heat the oil until shimmering. Add red pepper and stir until fragrant. Add onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft. Add mango and let cook for one minute.

Seperately, mix the apple juice, cider vinegar, brown sugar, curry powder, ginger and cinnamon. Add to skillet and bring to a slow simmer. Let simmer for about 30 minutes, until juice mixture has reduced to a sauce. Stir frequently.

When chutney has reached the desired consistency, add salt and pepper to taste. Stir in raisins and serve. 

This recipe would be really good on pork chops, roast or pan-fried chicken, and some types of fish. I paired it with baked tilapia - my parents really liked it, but I thought the tilapia was a tad bland. Maybe grilled or pan-fried. At any rate, the chutney itself was very good, and just sweet enough. In the future, I'll make extra and jar it for future use, or to use as gifts.

Additionally, next time I will not serve mango chutney on yellow plates. My food presentation skills leave a lot to be desired.

*Once again, fail to Green BEAN Delivery for sending us food that is neither seasonal nor local. These were from Peru, for crying out loud. However, since I love mango chutney, I choose to magnanimously forgive them.

**As a child, I was caught in the bathroom, eating sugar by the spoonful. Multiple times.