Strawberries in Central New York: Don't blink, or they'll be gone

The season is short. The flavors are intense.

It's one of the things that makes late June in Central New York so special: local strawberries.

"It's just such a finite time when the berries are fresh, and then they're gone," said John Caveny, co-owner of Jolime Fresh Garden Cafe , a restaurant attached to Chuck Hafner's Farmers Market & Garden Center in Clay. "It's an Upstate New York thing. Everyone knows when the strawberries start rolling out."

Hafner's, perhaps best known for its flowers and plants, doesn't open its fresh produce stand for the season until the strawberries are ready. Then the cafe uses some of Hafner's produce in its salads, desserts and other offerings.

You'll find Hafner-grown Jewel strawberries at the cafe right now, in a spinach salad, a shortcake and even fresh strawberry milkshakes. You'll also find recipes using strawberries in "Simple, Fresh & Healthy: A Collection of Seasonal Recipes," by Hafner's co-owner Linda Hafner. The book is for sale at the market.

» Plenty of places to pick your own strawberries in Central New York [The Post-Standard]

The farm-to-table philosophy is also evident at Elderberry Pond in Sennett, near Auburn. It's a farm, a country store and a restaurant. The strawberries, like the rest of Elderberry Pond's fresh produce, travel less than a mile from the fields where they're grown.

What is it that makes local strawberries special?

"They're not always the biggest or the best-looking," said Merby Lego, the farmer at Elderberry Pond (her son Chris is the restaurant chef). "But they do have that flavor you won't find in most commercial berries. Local is definitely more intense."

By commercial berries, she means those that you can find nearly year-round in supermarkets. Those are nice and big and have uniform "strawberry" shapes.

"The varieties from California or Mexico are grown for their shipping qualities," Lego said. "They look good. But nobody really cares about the taste."

Size matters, too, she said.

"I was once told there's only so much flavor in a strawberry," Lego said. "In a small berry, it's more compact; in a big one it's more spread out."

Lego is especially fond of a variety she grows called Sparkle.

"It's hard to pick and doesn't keep well," Lego said, "so it's not much good for shipping. You have to use it in two days, or it will start to get mushy."

But when it's ripe, she said, "Sparkle is my absolute favorite.

Strawberry Sorbet Recipe - Burghilicious

People I work with should know better than to tell me what came in the CSA this week. I’m the human equivalent of snakes in a can when it comes to talking about ingredients and produce, particularly at this time of year, when my long lost friends – greens! asparagus! strawberries! – finally come back into my life.

And I mean real strawberries. Not the white golf balls with red paint from the grocery store (which, I admit, I buy as soon as they go on sale each spring out of desperation.) In-season, local strawberries are brilliantly red, sweet and tart at once, and have a much more complex flavor than store strawberries. I’ve learned my lesson, and I now buy several pounds each time I visit the farmer’s market. Of course, that means that I have lots of strawberries to use up in a very short time – the real strawberries never last as long as the golf balls – and these are some of my favorite recipes to use, sweet and savory. (But mostly sweet.)

2. Strawberry Balsamic Cupcakes

Balsamic vinegar helps the strawberry flavor in these cupcakes really sing. You reduce a pound of berries, a lot of sugar and a good measure of balsamic to a heavy syrup that you use to flavor both the berries and the icing. The balsamic brings out the natural tartness of the berries… which you then sweeten up considerably, because hey, it’s a cupcake. Bonus: the recipe makes more strawberry balsamic syrup than you use in the recipe, and it’s delicious on just about anything.

Strawberry Balsamic Cupcakes on Burghilicious

3. Strawberry Balsamic Flatbread

I’m newly addicted to Joy the Baker, where I discovered yet another use for in-season strawberries (and balsamic, for that matter.) This yeasted flatbread is subtly orange-flavored and topped with sliced strawberries. I added finely, finely sliced red onion for some additional savory bite. Out of the oven, you sprinkle on crumbled goat cheese, chopped mint and sea salt. I further mussed around making the bread with half whole-wheat flour (came out fine) and adding chopped basil in addition to the mint (also great.)

Strawberry Balsamic Flatbread on Joy the Baker

4. Strawberry Summer Cake

Speaking of addictions, my 4+ year addiction to Smitten Kitchen continues unchecked, thanks to Deb’s finely honed ability to choose recipes that brilliantly highlight single ingredients… like strawberries. Then, she goes and take pictures that have me licking my iPhone screen while I ride the T to work, which is just embarrassing. It’s much better to lick the top of this cake instead: the whole strawberries bake at a low temperature for more than an hour, turning them into oozy pockets of jam surrounded by a lightly crunchy cake, thanks to a sprinkling of sugar.

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