This month, we have another recipe from cookery writer Annette van Ruitenburg, with strawberries in the starring role.

Strawberries from Zelfpluktuin Voedselbos Texel

“Texel’s strawberries have such a wonderful flavour, you could recognise them anywhere. It’s best to pick the strawberries when they are as ripe as possible – then they’ll have the most fantastic flavour.

Fresh strawberries are delicious, but strawberries make good preserves, too. You can make jam, syrup and liquor from them and you can dry them too. Our customers were actually the ones who suggested pick-your-own strawberries, recalls Trudy Boersen. When she and her husband harvested their first strawberries in 1994, everyone was delighted with these little bombs of flavour. In fact, people were queueing up to get hold of a carton of strawberries. One lady suggested that she wouldn’t mind picking them herself – and paying for them, of course. And that’s how the pick-your-own concept started. This has since grown into Zelfpluktuin Voedselbos Texel (food forest). Here you can taste and pick everything that is ripe on the spot.

Here’s Annette’s recipe for Texel strawberries. It makes an amazing salad for lunch but goes well with a barbecue too.

Ingredients

• 250 g. strawberries
• 250 g. small tomatoes
• 2 dessert spoons balsamic vinegar
• 50 g. marsh samphire
• black pepper, freshly ground
• 1 dessert spoon honey
• 1 dessert spoon olive oil

Method

Rinse the strawberries – you can cut them in half if you like - and put them in a large dish. Cut the tomatoes in half, heat the halves for 3-5 minutes with the balsamic vinegar in a frying pan on a low heat and then allow them to cool. Heated tomatoes taste sweeter. Blanch the marsh samphire for a minute in boiling water and then rinse it immediately in cold water. If you can’t get any marsh samphire, you can use basil leaves and rocket instead. Put the tomatoes in with the strawberries and add the marsh samphire. Finally, stir in the honey and the oil, your dish is ready.

Bon appétit!

More Texel recipes