I’ve been going through some of my old pictures and realized I have a couple of dishes that I haven’t blogged about. Back in mid August Carla headed down to Ashland, Oregon with her sisters to attend a couple of plays at the Shakespeare Festival. Left on my own, I was out running some errands when I drove by a roadside fruit stand and decided to pull in. The strawberries looked gorgeous and I had to have some – I’d figured out later what I’d do with them. Oregon is blessed with Hood strawberries in the summer. These are not the red-on-the-outside-white-on-the-inside strawberries that have no taste. These are the essence of strawberry: plump, juicy, sweet, and red all the way through. Come visit the Willamette Vally some summer and load up.
This was also the first weekend with my new Sony A7r II camera with a 90mm macro lens. I knew it would take some practice to get the results I want. I was looking for a shallow depth of field – looks like I got it!
Now, what to do with these luscious berries… A hot summer day calls for something light – so sorbet it is. I went to the Serious Eats website and found this super simple recipe. One strength of the recipe is you can scale up or down with simple ratios. Start by removing the tops of the berries and puréeing them in a food processor.
Then add sugar, lemon juice and a smidgen of kosher salt and mix together. Strain the mixture and freeze the mixture for two to three hours until very cold. Straining was a little easier said then done. When I made raspberry sorbet it was easy to strain the mixture because the seeds are so small and the purée was thinner. I had a real challenge straining the strawberries – they just didn’t want to go through my fine mesh strainer very easily. I overfilled the strainer and ended up with sticky, strawberry purée everywhere. After cleaning up and exercising some patience I got the purée strained.
After bringing the mixture out of the freezer it was time to turn it into sorbet by freezing in an ice cream maker for about 20 minutes. (Look at that shallow depth of field! I got the mixer paddle and a bit of sorbet in focus. Shooting at f/2.8 will do that.)
Finally transfer the sorbet to a container and freeze it for another two to three hours and you have dessert. It was ready when Carla got home from her sisters trip.
[Not one of my better pictures. As my photography expert friend Herb says, it is difficult to get close in shots in focus properly when holding the camera because the slightest jiggle will throw things off. Here I got part of the cookie and the edge of the glass bowl in focus but not my main subject. A flash would have helped. But photography – like any other endeavor – is a process.]
I know I am mean to share a summer recipe in the fall. What can I say it gives us something to look forward to in eight months!
