Recession conscious dessert- wine and fresh fruit

April 29, 1:11 PMWine ExaminerLeslie Cramer

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With express permission to copy,colleague and fellow wine writer Frank Machover from St. Thomas, Virgin Islands allowed me to share this with you:  a great recession conscious dessert, and with wine-  fabulous!

Ever since my first trip to my wife’s family house in Southwestern France during the summer, many years ago, I have been in love with the mixture of fruit and wine.  I can remember my  Father in law cutting up a fresh peach still warm from the orchards and putting the pieces in a wine glass, and covering with a good red wine to enjoy as desert. Peaches, Nectarines, Strawberries, Raspberries or a mixture in a glass of wine is one of the great treats of the gods! (Bacchus comes to mind).

Every summer in Southern France, the marketplaces overflow with the beauty of wonderful fresh fruit, and to have a strawberry or peach by itself is an experience.  Granted, we have the wonders of delicious Mangoes, passion fruit, guavas, fresh finger bananas and all sorts of unusual fruit here in the islands, but you will never eat a peach in the Virgin Islands like the one you have in France (or Georgia if memory serves) in the summer!

 We have been getting some pretty decent strawberries on island lately, and I decided to try and re-create a desert dish I had in Paris many years ago at a famous restaurant, La Marlotte;  Strawberries in Red Wine Sauce.  I will share this  masterpiece of blending wine and fruit with you on the sole condition that you try to make it soon. It’s easy and by far, one of the best deserts you will have ever wrapped your taste buds around:

STRAWBERRY SOUP

Ingredients:

2   1 lb packages of ripe strawberries (smell the fruit- if they don't smell like a strawberry, try another)
1 Bottle good rich  Red Wine such as a Bordeaux or Southwestern Madiran or Madiran Blend.
1 Clove
2 or 3 Cinnamon sticks
1 cup white sugar.

Directions:
Wash,  and pat dry  the strawberries. Remove the stem and any green.  Put aside 2 or 3 of the least pretty for the second part of this recipe.  Cut the rest of the strawberries into halves or quarters depending on the size of the berry. You want to be able to get about 2 or 3 pieces on a desert spoon.  Put the cleaned and sliced berries in a large bowl and sprinkle with about ½ the sugar. Very gently move the berries around to make sure they are all covered with sugar. (add a little more sugar if you like).  After about an hour, it will have made it's own juice which blends with the wine sauce described below:

Empty the entire bottle of wine into a non-reactive pan, put on medium heat. Add the clove and cinnamon and gently simmer until reduced by about ½.  Add the ½ cup remaining sugar  and reduce by ½ again. You should have a rather thick deep red reduction. Remove from heat and crush in the 2 or 3 large strawberries you put aside from the cleaning. Allow the liquid to cool. Strain and pour over the cut strawberries. Gently stir. Serve chilled in a pretty wine glass.  Add a mint sprig and a dollop of whipped cream if you like, but It's really not necessary.   YUMMY!

You can experiment with this dish by substituting raspberries, or even plumbs, but be sure the fruit is ripe enough to predominate the taste. In this case, the wine is secondary to the fruit, but be sure to use a good wine. The general rule is “Don’t cook with any wine you won’t drink”  Maecenas nec sapien. In auctor adipiscing nunc. Nullam.