Strawberries in Red Wine

Today is Earth Day and in an attempt to keep my “cookprint” to a minimum, I decided to make a simple, but crazy delicious dessert. Once again Lynne Rossetto Kasper is my inspiration. You see, my husband and I are planning a trip to Italy this summer with our boys. In an attempt to get ready for the journey we’ve been eating a lot of Italian food. I figure it is more important to understand the food than, let’s say, learn the language! 😉 So I whipped up a batch of Lynne’s lasagna and then followed it with this incredibly easy and yet divine bowl of strawberries in red wine.

I’ve been reading on other food blogs about the perfect spring crop of fresh strawberries. Well, here in Minneapolis we finally have buds on the trees, but we’re a good while off before we are plucking fruits from the vine. In fact today is the day that the Backyard Harvest folks deliver the dirt for my Urban Farm. By June I’ll have my own organic garden, but until then…to the market I go. The strawberries I bought at the store were decent, but not yet at their full potential. To maximize their flavor I macerated them in red wine and a touch of sugar. A little chiffonade of mint and they were bright and summery.

For the Strawberries in Red Wine by Lynne Rossetto Kasper The Splendid Table and a little bit me:

2 cups fruity red wine (Merlot, Zinfandel) or whatever you happen to be drinking. I used Pinot because that is what I’d opened!

1 teaspoon lemon juice, plus 1 teaspoon zest to perk things up a bit

1/4 cup sugar, or to taste

2 pints ripe strawberries, rinsed and hulled

6 large mint leaves or basil (as suggested by Giff!)

1 recipe Zabaione if you need to be a little more decadent! recipe at the end of post!

In a large bowl mix together the wine, lemon juice and zest. Add the strawberries and allow to sit at room temperature for an hour. Then refrigerate for another hour. Don’t let them sit more than 2 hours or they will start to break down too much.

To chiffonade the mint:

Fresh mint | ZoëBakes | Photo by Zoë François

Wash and separate out the larger leaves of mint.

Slicing fresh mint | ZoëBakes | Photo by Zoë François

Stack several leaves together and roll them into a log. Cut the log into very small slices.

Fresh sliced mint | ZoëBakes | Photo by Zoë François

This is a chiffonade of mint. This technique is wonderful for all kinds of broad leaf herbs.

strawberries in red wine with fresh mint | ZoëBakes | Photo by Zoë François

Toss the mint with the strawberries at the last second and serve in small bowls or glasses. Make sure to scoop up some of the juices.

strawberries in red wine with fresh mint and whipped cream | ZoëBakes | Photo by Zoë François

They are wonderful with a dollop of whipped cream or a Zabaione made with Marsala wine.

Zabaione from The Splendid Table:

6 large egg yolks

1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons dry (or sweet) Marsala (found by the Port and Sherry at your wine shop)

1/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup heavy cream, whipped to stiff peak

In a large metal bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, Marsala, and sugar. Set the bowl over a double boiler and whisk for 5 minutes or until the mixture is thick and reads 165 degrees on an instant-reading thermometer. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for several hours or overnight. Right before serving fold in the heavy whipping cream in 3 additions.

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104 thoughts to “Strawberries in Red Wine”

  1. A friend who is a baker chef in Montreal prepared a similar recipe on the BBQ one summer. I brought two small baskets of strawberries. I am amazed how he elevated them to a superb dessert. I never asked for his recipe. Glad to have yours.

  2. The berries look delicious, so vibrant!! I love homemade granola too, it is SO much better than the store bought stuff. My dad’s cinnamon rolls remind me of home. It is my grandma’s recipe. They are a family favorite and my dad is famous for them. They are SO good!

  3. Ahhh — I get to live vicariously through you as you plan your trip to Italy. I’m wishing I had another in the works, and I’m smiling because I did quite a bit of Italian cooking too before we left. The berries sound heavenly — we’ve already got them coming out our ears around here. And looking forward to doing a post on what reminds me of home. Thanks Zoe!

  4. lovely treatment of strawberries. Last summer I also discovered (from Lucullian Delights I think) a neat and simple treatment combining strawberries, chiffonade of fresh basil, and honey.

  5. yum do those strawberries look good. Have you tried soaking grapes in white wine and a bit of sugar. It’s wonderful.

    Foods that remind me of home are malt-o-meal and oatmeal. We ate this most mornings sitting in front of the register under a blanket.

  6. Hi Giff,

    I was thinking Basil would be fantastic too! I think that should be my next combo!

    Thanks everyone for the wonderuful notes!

    Zoë

  7. The strawberries look fantastic!

    The food that reminds me of home is my grandmother’s blackberry pie. We used to go out on her farmland picking wild blackberries…then she’d collect them all from us and make a delicious pie. 🙂

  8. the food that reminds me of home will always be my mom’s calumet sugar cookies. the recipe is from an old cookbook that came with calumet baking powder. the cookies have just a little spice in them that makes then unlike any other.

  9. I grew up near Syracuse, NY….hooked on half moon cookies. Imagine my surprise when I grew up and moved away and no one knew what I was talking about! To me home is half moon cookies AKA Black & Whites.

  10. Karen tagged me as well and I posted about my fav comfort foods. One I left out was the hamburgers my mom would serve on white bread. The hamburger juice soaks into the bread and YUM!

  11. So many foods remind me of home, the top three would be 1) pound cake 2) blueberry pancakes and 3) a plate of sliced cucumbers, tomatoes, and bell peppers dressed with nothing but salt and pepper. These are the food that my grandparents prepared that really remind me of home.

  12. The food that most reminds me of home is lasagna. My mom makes it whenever we have guests coming, or if the whole family will be there. When I was young my brothers and I couldn’t stand it cause we ate it so much. Now my mom won’t make it anymore and I’ve begun to miss it.

  13. Home is my dad’s pizza or chocolate chip cookies, and my mom’s soup and cornbread. I miss not having to make dinner for myself!

  14. My mom was a terrible cook. But she made these few things sometimes which, I guess you had to grow up with because only my sisters and Dad and I love them but they are awesome and remind me of home. The best is my mothers antipasto.

    A mandala of romaine, kosher salami, velveeta slices (yes!), sliced hard boiled eggs and tomatoes. Top this decoratively with sardines and anchovies and whole green onions and drizzle the oil from the sardines on top. Wrap in cellephane overnight. (but it was really best 2 days later when the oil and tomato juice sort of melted the cheese into everything and all of it stuck together in one mushy clump). I still crave it when I miss my mom.

  15. PS… I’m also planning a trip (honeymoon) in Italy! Have you read Jamie Oliver’s “Jamie’s Italy”? It’s amazing. Lots of stories about hanging out with people and learning about how they eat. The sections on the shepherds and the 4 generations of pasta making women…wonderful stuff.

  16. Thanks for the recipe, we’ll try it this week as we’re getting more strawberries in our CSA veggie box today.

    Foods that remind me of home? Korean food. Kalbi with kimchee, rice and all those wonderful side dishes. In fact, my mom made it for me a couple of weeks ago when I went to visit for lunch.

  17. The food that reminds me of home would definitely be egg tarts and banana nut bread. My mom always seemed to have those 2 desserts on hand.

  18. The food that reminds me of home was my mother’s apple cake. Because she is no longer living the recipe was lost.B ut my mother-in-law found lots of recipes and baked everyone for me, when I tasted the right one, I started crying. The cake tastes of fall and is a great breakfast cake.

  19. I think my mom’s Apple Pie..piled high with 5 varieties of apples, and a crust I cannot duplicate reminds me of home..her gkids would say her rice pudding..
    She also made great potted pork chops..

  20. Sunday dinners: roasted chicken(tender and moist and falling off the bone good!), real mashed potatoes with gravy, and fresh corn with lots of butter. Also on baking day , we always had apple dumplings for dinner, with fresh cream (we lived on a small farm). Stephanie

  21. Love strawberries! A little bit of fresh cracked black pepper adds a great surprise to the berries in wine. 😉

    The biggest reminder of home is tomato sauce made from freshly picked, garden grown tomatoes. I have no idea how many thousands of quarts of sauce my grandmother and I put up when I was growing up.

  22. Since my mom isn’t a gourmet chef…or even a really decent cook, nothing reminds me of home more than eating apple pie for dinner. Because my mom IS a good baker…nor is she a health nut, apparently.

  23. Your strawberries in wine and zabaione look fabulous! I can’t wait to try it when our Wisconsin strawberries are in season.

    The food that reminds me most of home is frikadellers. My mother made them often as she was mostly Danish and my father was all Danish. They take me right back to my childhood.

  24. My Mother made a strawberry\rhubarb sauce from our garden. It was delish eaten alone or on top of her yummy bread pudding.

    Zoe,Artisan Bread in 5 mins is a hit with my coworkers. We enjoy sharing new ideas and our latest sucess!

  25. Oh, yum! I will have to bring this recipe when I visit my mom this week. I’m giving my sister a copy of your bread book too!

    My grandmother’s chicken & dumplings is what I crave when I’m homesick. No one could make them like hers until I interviewed her and made a family cookbook in college. That “just the recipe from the Fanny Farmer cookbook” she used was actually different in her older copy than it was in our newer ones! Now I can make them whenever I want!

  26. Growing up on the Iron Range of MN – pasties (past-eez) are unique to ‘home’ for me. Now that I live in such a metropolitan place like MPLS – i don’t often have pasties for dinner anymore. However, my Mom still makes big batches of the meat pie (shaped like a calzone) for myself and my brothers. Originally made for the miners lunch box – they are the perfect meal!

  27. My dad was a chef for the C&O railroad way back when they had dining car service. He cooked in the American style at his job. But at home he would sometimes cook his native Filipino food for us. Adobo, pancit, and sotanghan remind me of home.

  28. This dessert reminds me of summers in Germany, where they use fresh strawberries in a combo of Riesling and Champagne to make a decadent and heady punch. It is to die for:) And of course the strawberries soak up the alcohol, so if you go for the berries thinking you will avoid the alcohol….not so fast, my pretty! You will soon be spinning! What a yummy way to go!

  29. what reminds me of home is a memory of my mother making yeast cakes for Rosh Hashonah and post Yom Kippur – she made two large tube pan cakes, 1 large round cake about 5 inches high, 24 what she called buchtas in a muffin tin, 3 coffee rings. It was a time consuming process and she baked these only once a year. About 40 years ago I made one in a tube pan and never again.

  30. This simple strawberry dessert reminds me of home andthe delicious fruit salads we ate growing up in South Africa. We had amazing choices of tropical fruits including grenadillas (passion fruit), guavas and lychees. Fruit salads were usually served with vanilla icecream – yum!

  31. For me it’s perogies, Ukranian sausage, and cabbage rolls that my grandmother used to make. How I miss those meals!

  32. Thanks again Zoe for the great ideas. I finally did the naan yesterday and it was great. I love this recipe for the simplicity. I can hardly wait for our strawberries to start bearing.

  33. Beautiful strawberries! A dish that reminds me of home is blintz souffle. The recipe has been in my family for generations, and each of the women in my family make it for me when I visit. They know it’s my favorite!

  34. leftover roast beef in light gravy over rice with lots of curry powder and Mom’s macaroni & cheese – my niece & nephews’ absolute favorite – Grandma’s Noodle Cheese!

  35. Thanks for thinking of me 🙂

    I’ve been playing w/ strawberries all day… baking away. Your method looks delicious! We have an abundance of strawberries right now.

    My fave childhood food memory: Apple Aebelskivers with homemade Strawberry Jam. My aunt used to make them for breakfast every time I spent the night at my cousin’s house.

  36. the food that reminds me most of home is homemade chicken noodle soup made with very thin noodles. My grandmother used to make me this when I was a young child.

  37. The food that reminds me of home would be roasted chicken with potato maionese (a brazilian potato salad) and fried polenta. We eat it almost every saturday when the family gets together and is perfect. Is a simple meal and a mixture of german and italian food. We love it! Thanks for the giveaway!

  38. I am so jealous!!!! My dear husband is Italian and I have always wanted to go there. I love bread so indulging in bread and cheese would be wonderful. Of course fresh every day. My Mom was Norwegian–she made a pudding of cream, flour, sugar and cinnamon. I don’t know if I am spelling it right but it was Rhumigrout.

  39. Zoe,
    Love your book and have baked so much bread! I have had great results! I have my first batch of Briche on the counter.
    Thanks for the book and now I’ll spend the day looking around your site. Strawberry’s look so good that I’ll have to go shopping again.

  40. This looks amazing…I love Berries & Zabione. Yum!

    Home for me is probably the Ham and Rice casserole I grew up with. Or maybe my dad’s spaghetti. My dad’s a great cook, and made a lot of different things.

  41. I love your website. I bought your book and I’m amazed that I can make home made bread. It is the best bread book I’ve ever had!!

    Foods that remind me of home are the typical comfort foods..mac and cheese, meatloaf.

  42. Chocolate zucchini cake with zucchini from the garden. Or dipping rhubarb stalks in a plastic cup of sugar. Or the smell of bread baking.

  43. I’m from Colombia and everytime I go to my mom’s house she always makes hot chocolate and arepas (they are like thick tortillas)filled with cheese for breakfast. Now everytime I make this for my husband it reminds me of home.

  44. Light and fluffy wheat bread always reminds me of home. Growing up I just wanted Wonder Bread…now I lust after my mother’s homemade wheat bread.

  45. Wontons. But only the ones my mom makes, with shrimp and ground pork. Unfortunately everytime I have wontons anywhere else I think “mmm… not as good as mom’s.”

  46. Seeing these strawberries reminded me of food from home. When we were kids,my Mom would slice up a big bowl of strawberries, add a little sugar and make some shortcakes. Mmmm 🙂

  47. my mom was an awful cook. she married an egyptian man when i was 9. he taught her how to make curried rice and roasted chicken. the smell of curry reminds me of home.

  48. Food that reminds me of home… my mother was a great cook, so we had so many delicious foods. My favorite pie was her strawberry pie. As I grew a bit older I also fell in love with strawberry rhubarb. My mom also makes the BEST country ribs. Yum yum!!

  49. what gorgeous berries! i love the contrast of green on red. 🙂
    meanwhile, the food that reminds me most of home is popcorn. yes, popcorn. i have fond memories of cuddling up with my family and passing around a big bowl of it while watching movies. 🙂

  50. Hi Zoe, lovely pix as usual..

    Food that reminds me of home,the vegetable soup my mom made when I was unwell, it was always a life saver…and the cup of black coffee she made every morning.
    Thank God for moms!

  51. The food that reminds me most of home is probably my mom’s brisket followed closely by a Tuna casserole (just because it was one of the first things I was shown how to make).

  52. Grilled cheese and chicken soup and ginger ale! Every time I have -any- of them I think of my grandmother’s kitchen.

  53. Ribs. My dad would make the most incredible sweet and savory saucy ribs, loaded with peppercorns, which would be our excuse when we wanted more juice!

  54. Nothing reminds me of home like the smell of baking bread. My mother baked twice a week when I was growing up, and to this day there is nothing more satisfying and nostalgic than a slice of warm bread with butter!

  55. My dad’s homemade chili reminds me of home. He would make a hug stock-pot of it a few times each winter. We’d just put it outside to keep it cold, no fridge required. That stuff with crusty bread. I miss it so much.

  56. strawberries are lovely this time of year – my favorite way is to slice them over Greek yogurt with a little drizzle of honey.

    Strawberries also are my best Home memory – my Mom used to make my birthday cake every year with angel food cake, whip cream and fresh strawberries. To this day, I cannot see a pint of strawberries without happy memories of birthdays past!

  57. That looks delicious. I’m from Slovakia, so to have food that reminds me of home … I will have to make it myself. Potato dumplings with sheep cheese, sauerkraut soup and a good rye bread but I can find that one every once in a while in a store.

  58. What a simple & stunning way to do strawberries Zoe. Will have to wait until next year to try it since the season is done with here. The smell of onions ‘frying’ & ripe mangoes reminds me of home…takes me back to my childhood!

  59. First, I love strawberries with balsamic vinegar and sweet whipped cream. Mmmm.

    Second, the food that reminds me of home is cornbread dressing at the holidays. No one, and I mean no one, makes it like my mom and one whif of it baking in the oven transports me to my childhood when I would stand by the oven so I could the the taste tester. 🙂

  60. Pumpkin tortellini w/ homemade pesto surely reminds me of home.

    My grandmother would also make the BESTTTTTTTT German Chocolate Cake from scratch every holiday… just for me 🙂

  61. i love strawberry season!!! anyway, the food that reminds me most of home is my mother’s lasagna. recently, my brother got married and i put together a family cookbook for the new bride, comprised of family recipes complete with little stories of their origin. little did i know, until my mother evealed it, that the lasgana recipe had come from my grandmother–i never got to know her well, so was glad i had piece of her with me (in form of the recipe memorized in my head).

  62. Food that reminds me of home…freshly baked bread or cookies and warm stew simmering away on the stovetop. I am a le creuset addict and would be thrilled to add to my collection. 🙂

  63. The food that reminds me of home the most if blackberry cobbler. Which is kind of strange because I don’t even really like it that much. But it is what comes to mind when I think of my mom cooking when I was young.

    Great Contest!

  64. Lovely post, the strawberries look delicious. And Trish, great initiative, have a good and safe ride!

    Food in general reminds me of home. But the top three things for me:

    Steak – or just about anything on the BBQ grill. This is when I got to hang out with my dad, who was more than happy to enjoy his cocktail while I manned the grill.

    Beef Stew – my mom still makes the best beef stew. Sadly, she cooks like I do, without a recipe! Through trial and error, my husband and I are getting better at recreating this delicious, hearty, inexpensive meal.

    Macaroni and cheese. I am really lucky, we NEVER had to eat this from a box. My mom has a wonderful recipe using elbow macaroni, three different cheeses, some cream and butter, so simple and takes about 15 minutes to put together. The best part is the browned cheese crust that forms on the top. Plus, the texture is far better (IMHO), it’s not slick like the Kraft version.

  65. What food reminds me of home? My mom’s Lebanese cooking, especially koosa, which is a summer squash stuffed with a meat and rice mixture, spiced mostly with cinnamon and allspice.

  66. The food that most reminds me of home is our Sunday sauce. My husband and I have known each other since we were 15yrs old. I used to love eating at his house on Sunday because his mom (now my beloved mother inlaw) always made meat and red sauce for the macaroni. I have since learned from her how and I carry on the tradition when she is not staying with us. Yes, I would love the heart shaped ramekin!

  67. The scent of brown sugar and butter melting bubbling in a saucepan is THE scent of Halloween in my family.
    For over 3 decades my mom made homemade butterscotch to hand out to the trick or treaters.
    The youngest members of our tribe had to remember to bring some into school for the teachers who remembered our older sisters and brother,
    I still make one batch a year to keep up the tradition with my girls. Thank goodness it is GF

  68. For as long as I can remember, my family has made Lefse for every major holiday. Lefse is thin and soft, much like a flexible tortilla – but made from potatoes and hailing from Norway. My Dad makes and carves Lefse sticks and my Mom makes the Lefse. We all sit around the table and eat it hot off the grill. I can’t wait to teach my daughter how to make it!

  69. My mother’s lemon meringue pie reminds me of home. She’d rather eat out but when I visit I beg her to make this pie as it’s killer!

  70. Home is my grandmother’s stollen, her own “Mutter’s” old German recipe that I have tried and tried to duplicate. Currents, nuts and a sugary glaze are the highlights of this golden braided bread. We’d make it when I was a little girl and enjoyed it every holiday. I have come close with some of my own desperate attempts, but it’s just not the same.

  71. My mom has made an orange-cranberry bread for Thanksgiving for as long as I can remember. I’ve never had another one like it, and it always makes me feel like home.

  72. I must make those strawberries! Peas straight from the garden remind me of home, because you can really only get them if you grow them yourself.

  73. HAHA! I laughed when I read your requirement for the giveaway because I was not raised with home cooking, since my mother didn’t/doesn’t know how to cook, and my father, who is a good cook, wasn’t around. I would say that to-go boxes from various restaurants most remind me of home as a child. Now that I cook and bake daily, things are different. However, I still don’t have a particular dish in my mind that conjures up that warm feeling of home. 🙁

  74. My mom makes the best fried chicken. I’m not sure how she makes it so good. I’ve tried it myself and it never tastes like hers. Even as an adult I’ll call her up and pester her to make me some!

  75. One of my fondest food memories is the wonderful poppyseed or nut rolls (filled yeasted sweet bread rolls scented with mace and lemon zest)that my grandmother used to make for holidays. I think these came from her middle/eastern European background. I am pained that in a recent move I accidentally tossed the recipes written in her own hand.

  76. Strawberry season is upon us and these berries look like a must try. My fondest food memories is of a Custard Gelatin my mom use to make. My mom is gone and with her it appears, is that recipe. I cant find it anywhere. Not even Google. Can you imagine?

  77. My mother didn’t cook alot but her Chicken Fricassee and her meatballs were the best.

    The only dessert she made was confetti jello, small dice of colorful jello mixed with whip cream and chambord liquor. Served in a huge glass bowl, this was my favorite growing up.

  78. I would love to participate in this event and raise awareness for education and homelessness. Have I missed the deadline? In the meantime the foods that remind me of home are English Muffin Loaves. My sister and I would make them as often as we could when we sent away for the recipe booklet from the yeast company in the early ’70’s.They speak to our English roots without all the fuss of making English Muffins.

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