Uses for Strawberries

Remember all those strawberries I bought 10 days ago? They've been hanging out in the Debbie Meyers Green Bags since then, and I'm happy to report that although a few of them are getting squishy, not one of them has molded or gone nasty. Mongo impressed. But I still need to use them up, so yesterday I made some individual strawberry tarts for a small dinner party. I used the Cook's Illustrated Fresh Fruit Tart recipe, and it was spectacular. Everyone liked all the parts - the pastry, the cream, and the fruit.

Recently some folks in the CI bulletin board indicated they were having trouble with the pastry cream from this recipe not being firm enough. I wish I could help them figure out what's wrong, because it sure isn't the recipe. I have made it several times with great success. This time I even tried a few things to see if I could make it runny, just in the interest of troubleshooting, but it set up firm despite my efforts at sabotage. I tried under cooking it a bit, then over-stirring it at the end. It's still perfect. The tart crust is an excellent, firm but tender pate sucree (I sure wish I could figure out how to get diacritical marks on Typepad...).

I need to work on my decorating ability, but even with sloppy berry placement the individual tarts were an impressive end to a fine meal, which consisted of a smoked turkey (sorry, I forgot to get photos!), stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, and two salads. Plus one friend brought a bottle of rum and some Coke, so there was happiness all around.

Back to the berries. In the fridge right now I have a custard chilling for strawberry ice cream. I wasn't in a snap-happy mood today, so I don't have any photos of making the custard. It's just as well since I screwed up a little and smooshed the strawberries too much. Oh well, I'm sure it will taste great, tomorrow. It will be too late tonight to churn, since I'm about ready for bed now. Boy, I remember when I was only getting started at 9:30 (and it wasn't that long ago!).