Strawberry Seduction

The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice.

That old saying is dead wrong.

We've been in the midst of springtime strawberry madness, ever since our first fling experimenting with gariguette strawberries. We've since dived head-first into these relatively pale, small, but surprisingly flavorful berries.

Going back to using the passoir à grosseiles food mill/strainer/toy type thing, our first order of business was to turn a 280g basket of gariguettes into syrup for desserts, beverages, etc.


After hours of cooking down, straining, filtering, and cooking down some more, it's a bit disappointing to find that a heaping basket of strawberries yields less than 100ml of concentrated syrup.

Then you taste it, licking a tiny little drop off the the tip of your finger, and it's as though about 100 berries just invaded your mouth, overwhelming your tastebuds and palate like a big strawberry monster.

Despite past (successful) attempts on both of our behalves to survive on a liquid diet, we then decided to try something more solid: Jam. Of course, we had to go that extra trendy, Parisian route and make it a confiture de gariguette au poivre noir – with black pepper. During the cooking process, the generous pinch of black pepper (in about 1.5 basket's worth of strawberries, macerated in sugar the night before) seemed a bit much and gave the rapidly reducing mixture a cough-inducing bite.


But after canning and cooling, the pepper mellows out into a sublime foil to the extreme sweet and tart supplied by the powerful little strawberries.

And that hint of pepper somehow rounds out the combination of strawberry jam, salted butter, and freshly toasted baguette. The sweet and savory makes this simple, quick breakfast item feel almost like a meal. Other than, you know, that whole part about wanting more, and more, and more...

Li'l Puffies Drippin' with Honey

Alannah's been at it since well before she was even a teenager.

In fact, her dad told me she's been doing this little trick since she was 7 years old – and could barely reach the kitchen counter.

Her puff pancake is a weekend brunch legend, destined to be a hangover helper for years to come.

Take your favorite pancake batter recipe and remove the leavening agent. Instead, add a couple of extra eggs and beat the ever-loving hell out of it. As it sits in a hot oven for 20 minutes, you'll see it rise like a soufflé, several centimeters above the side of the pie dish it's sitting in. Seeing something gently grow like that is almost as exciting... as eating it.

Once you take it out of the oven it immediately starts to go flaccid, so you have to work quickly, cutting it into portions and plating it. It's best accompanied by your choice of breakfast meat. Ours is bacon, since its smokey flavor goes well with the warm, sticky honey/melted butter/lemon juice syrup that you drizzle over the plate. You can also pick up the crispy bacon and lick the honey syrup off for bonus points.