Finding a Sweet Solution

When the season’s first sweet strawberries begin arriving at the farmers’ markets, I always wade into the glistening crimson drifts and take home at least half a flat. For me, it’s part of an annual ritual that began the first time I went berry-picking, almost 20 years ago.

I’d taken a rural Seattle bus to its last stop and stepped onto a dusty road across from a stand adorned with a hand-painted “berries” sign and a gargantuan outsider-art representation of the fruit itself. I picked up my box and set to work turning over the bright green leaves and pulling huge, perfect berries from their stems. After a few plants, I developed a rhythm--one for me, one for the box--and settled into a trance-like state of munching and plucking. By the end of the row, I was fairly well-stained with juice and streaked with dust, but my box was a wonder, heaped with shades of red.

It wasn’t until I tried to lift the box that I realized I’d lost all sense of time and proportion. Amid acres of plants under the vast sky, I’d been a tiny speck in the strawberry sea. But as I hefted my load to the stand to pay, I knew I had enough fruit to fill a reservoir. I’d picked 40 pounds.

At home, I pulled out every strawberry recipe I could find, each seeming to call for a scant cup here, a paltry two pints there. I froze some, plied friends with a good portion and froze some more. Then I finally found deliverance: a recipe from Helen Witty’s “The Good Stuff Cookbook” that distilled the essence of my strawberry abundance and turned it into an intense Italian fruit syrup. I will never forget the relief of seeing the words “21/2 pounds of berries” or tasting the first batch and thinking “summer in a bottle.”

Mixed with sparkling water or drizzled into lemonade, the ruby syrup makes a sweet and refreshing beverage that was my house drink that summer. It’s real strawberry soda--strong as you want to make it--and nothing like the chemistry-set stuff that comes in cans. The syrup has also made featured appearances at Sunday brunch, dripping over stacks of pancakes and waffles or pooled under ice cream. In its pure dessert incarnation, it has fancied-up pound cake and whipped cream and added a sweet dollop of refinement to bowls of sliced peaches and nectarines.

Now every strawberry season is an excuse to stock up at the market, make another batch of syrup and dream up new ways to use it to summon the spirits of summer right to the tip of my tongue. When I’m feeling really inspired, I’m likely to follow a roadside sign near Oxnard, go back to the fields and pick “a few” berries myself.

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ITALIAN STRAWBERRY SYRUP

Makes about 7 cups

Adapted from Helen Witty’s “The Good Stuff Cookbook” (Workman Publishing)

*

2 1/2 pounds ripe strawberries

(4 to 5 pint baskets)

5 cups water

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

3/4 cup fresh lemon juice, strained

4 cups sugar

*

Clean and stem berries, then crush by hand or machine. Pour pulp into large ceramic or glass bowl and add 1 cup water and yeast. Cover with cloth and let stand at room temperature for 3 days, stirring twice a day. Fermentation is complete when pulp no longer bubbles after top crust is stirred in. It looks scary, but keep going.

Set colander lined with two layers of damp fine cheesecloth over large bowl. Pour in pulp and let juice drain into bowl. When juice flow slows, tie corners of cloth to make bag and hang over bowl to drip. After several hours, press and squeeze bag to extract last drops, which will be murky. Discard pulp.

Combine juice in large stainless-steel or other nonreactive pot with remaining 4 cups water, lemon juice and sugar. Bring to boil over medium-high heat and simmer briskly, stirring occasionally, until syrup has reduced to about 7 cups, about 15 minutes. Skim syrup, let it cool and skim again.

Funnel cooled syrup into clean, dry bottles. Cap or cork bottles (using new corks or clean caps only) and refrigerate syrup.

Variations: Raspberries make an elegant syrup, as do other ripe summer fruits.