In Mumbai at least, spring is little more than a comma. A fleeting interval between smoggy winter and muggy summer. Still, it is my favourite season for one compelling reason — the bright red, plump, juicy strawberry.
Actually, let me rephrase that. Spring is my favourite season for many glorious reasons. Strawberries topped with whipped cream and sprinkled with sugar. Scoops of fresh strawberry ice cream. Strawberry and cream cheese tarts. Home-made strawberry jam. Bowls heaped with bright, tangy strawberry salads.
I discovered that strawberries were my favourite fruit when I was around five years old. While everybody else seemed to be waiting for April and
“Madam, let me come upstairs and show you the fresh strawberries I have,” the vendor would wheedle.
“No, you always charge too much,” the wily matrons would retort.
“If you don’t like the strawberries, you don’t have to buy them,” the vendor would promise, and march into the building with his load of strawberry baskets.
My mother and our neighbour — a gentle Parsi lady with snowy white hair — usually combined forces for the battle ahead. They would open their attack by declaring that the prices were ridiculous. Then they would announce that they were neither fools nor millionaires. After which they would unpack one basket after another, examining each strawberry as if it were a diamond. Finally, they would count. Every basket was supposed to hold eight dozen strawberries — and woe to the vendor who tried to shortchange these gimlet-eyed customers by supplying 95 instead of the promised 96.
While ruthless bargains were being struck, I would stand at the door hopping from one excited foot to the other and dreaming of the delights that lay ahead. Usually, my mother washed and hulled the strawberries before popping them into the mixer with sugar and making a thick red sauce. This was then stirred into strawberry milkshakes, or swirled over vanilla ice cream. Or, even better, mixed with thick fresh cream into a pale, pink dessert — a sweet-sour satiny concoction created for fairies and greedy little girls.
If guests were expected, the strawberries and cream would be poured over a base of shortbread biscuit or a sponge cake. As I grew older and more health-conscious, I started whisking the strawberry sauce into dahi. If my grandmother needed to entertain unexpectedly, she would buy a family pack of Kwality vanilla ice cream, let it start melting, then briskly mix the sauce into the ice cream and pop it back into the freezer. I don’t think anybody ever guessed the shortcut taken!
The strawberry season was woefully short, but we made the most of it. When prices were deemed to have hit rock bottom in March, my mother and our neighbour would plot together. Then they would waylay the unsuspecting vendor and inform him that they were prepared to buy every one of his 12 baskets. For a pittance, of course. Then they would split their haul and spend the afternoon stirring the berries into an addictive, sugary jam. The tart, sweet smell of cooking berries and scorching sugar filled the building with the joyful aroma of spring.
All this was, of course, a long time before strawberries were labelled a wonder food. Before they started arriving in Mumbai in neat cardboard boxes. And strawberry picking in quaint Mahabaleshwar became a standard activity on the ‘How to Entertain the Kids in Summer’ checklist.
Today, research indicates that strawberries are among the healthiest fruit around — and are bursting with antioxidants and vitamin C. So perhaps it’s not surprising that the ancient Romans used wild strawberries as a medicine for ailments ranging from melancholy to fever to inflammations.
It was the French who started cultivating strawberries, and by the 1300s, King Charles V had 1,200 strawberry plants in his garden. The heart-shaped fruit was a symbol for Venus, the goddess of love — and was also considered a beauty aid. There are records of faddish French beauties in the court of Napoleon who regularly bathed in the juice extracted from 22 pounds of strawberry.
To which all one can say is, “What a waste!”
There are so many better things those silly women could have done with their haul. Made a salad with spinach. Chopped a few strawberries into a bowl of chilled yoghurt. Whipped up a topping for pancakes and waffles. After all, as William Butler, a 17th-century writer, once remarked about this berry that is not biologically a berry at all, “Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did.”
Strawberry salad
Strawberries are so versatile and easy, you don’t really need fussy recipes. But here’s one for strawberry salad.
2 bunches spinach, rinsed and torn into bite-size pieces
4 cups sliced strawberries
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon paprika
2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
1 Toss the spinach and strawberries in a bowl. Whisk the other ingredients into a dressing and pour over the salad.
2 You can top with crumbled feta cheese or toasted almonds. Serve cold.
Shabnam Minwalla is a journalist and the author of The Strange Haunting of Model High School and The Shy Supergirl