As far as strawberry consumption and enjoyment goes, things were looking quite good back at the beginning of college. The discovery of how well they replaced bananas in corn flakes was revelatory in the dorm cafeteria, and they seemed to be good on their own when smuggled back to the dorm room and stashed in a fridge too small for much else.
Later that year a new friendship changed this blossoming fruit relationship into a full on binge courtesy of one Brian Driscoll. Raised on strawberries and the booming business that they had become for his family he naturally brought flats of them with him out to school after every trip home. In off campus housing by now, and with strawberries to spare, they found their way into margaritas, onto sandwiches, and into milkshakes.
At his wedding in Colorado a few years later papa Driscoll brought fist sized ones, replete with long stems which were dipped in chocolate and served fittingly before dessert. This should have been the height of strawberry consumption, but a strange thing happened. A move back east allowed for exposure to an entire other end of the spectrum – small berries, some even tiny.
Seemed that some lesser known varieties not suitable for the agribusiness world, due to yield and hardiness amongst other things, were being cultivated by East Coast farmers. Other berries such as the wild strawberries scattered all over Maine were also getting on the radar. These berries have a fantastic flavor and great texture, but hardly ever travel well. Excellent versions of some of these berries can be found at Greenmarkets throughout the NY Metro area, with special mention to Rick Bishop of Mountain Sweet Berry Farm for his Tristar berries. His berries are all over the menus of better restaurants in town as well including Lupa, The Tasting Room, WD-50 and Telepan.
Here are a few recipes from around the web where you can try your hand at an ingredient currently having its peak.
His cabin, on the wooded bank of the Beaverkill River, is his sanctuary, only about two and a half hours from his New York City apartment—and his two busy restaurants, Ouest and 'Cesca. “I come up here every weekend in the summer,” Valenti says. “It’s how I stay sane.” His upstate cooking strategy is the antidote to his hectic life in the city, where he spends most waking hours in clangorous, overheated kitchens. Here, he says, “I just throw everything on the grill.”
tilting toward the sleepy Beaverkill. An avid fly fisherman, he first saw the cabin in April 14 years ago, and loved its location on the trout-heavy river. (He is vehemently opposed to eating wild trout; anything he catches is immediately placed back in the water, nose into the current. Valenti recommends Edenbrook Farm–raised trout, which is available at Union Square Greenmarket.) He bought it despite the fact that the grounds were more or less barren. That May, however, brought a surprise fit for a chef: his yard exploded with vegetation, a lot of it edible. Ramps, watercress, and pineapple sage had sprung up on his lawn; tightly curled fiddlehead ferns and cattails had grown near the riverbank. Cattails are edible? “Oh, yeah!” he says. “Just strip the base of the stalk; they taste like a cross between asparagus and salsify.”
Sharing one of his cabin’s three small rooms is a kitchen. There is no counter space; a diminutive old-school gas oven is packed with Tupperware and assorted kitchen utensils. His working upstate kitchen is not inside the cabin but outside on the deck, overlooking the river—a small green Aussie Grill. “I just liked it because it was a pretty color,” he jokes, understanding my surprise that a chef who loves to grill would lack a stainless-steel monster. “It’s the same mechanism,” he added. “You don’t need the bells and whistles when you’re surrounded by them all week long.”
Soon, lunch was ready, and I was cracking the trout’s frail armor and digging in to its moist flesh. We were on the deck, and Valenti was looking out toward the water, naming birds as they flew by and soared overheard. His phone rang: a friend trying to plan a day of fly-fishing. Clearly, he was not thinking about his restaurants—a testament to a terrific support staff. “They used to call me a lot, but then I took the phone off the hook.”
