Lust on a spoon

Legend has it that Cardinal Wolsey was the first person to serve strawberries together with cream at Hampton Court. That would have been back in the 1500s before his fall from grace. The berries in question would have been native English wild strawberries as crimson as the cardinal’s robes and as intense as his ambition. And the cream unpasteurized and impossibly fresh.

Whether this story is true or not, there’s something about strawberries and cream that screams England – and sex. Whenever I think about this pairing, visions of Wimbledon, well-mannered men and women in big hats on brilliantly manicured green lawns spring to mind – images of civility and restraint that belie more primitive emotions lying just below the surface.

Would the British be insulted by this characterization? I doubt it. You don’t build an empire or sever your ties from the Roman Catholic church based on polite, flaccid feelings.

You can try and hide the true nature of strawberries and cream by serving it in dainty bowls at garden parties and quaint afternoon teas, but this dish is pure lust on a spoon.

Now, when I talk of lusty berries and sexy cream, I’m talking about produce that comes from small, local farms and dairies, not big commercial operations that turn out that thin, clinically pristine cream or those poor, freakish long-haul strawberries that arrive at grocery stores looking botoxed and tasting like sawdust. Those products are created with shelf-life, not sensuality, in mind. Eating them is about as sexy as making a baby in a test tube.

Real juicy, sweet strawberries and luscious, rich cream are sexy precisely because of their short shelf-life. (And cream, we all know, also earns the label “excessive” purely by virtue of its milk-fat content.) In most of the northern hemisphere, the true berry harvesting season is only a few weeks long, and the "best before" date on organic cream is even shorter. Once you bring organic berries home, they barely last a night before they start sprouting the telltale fuzz of decay.

This simple fact demands that you, the eater, seize the moment. Call it culinary carpe diem. There is an urgency to enjoying strawberries and cream in their original form that, as far as I’m concerned, gives you licence to indulge in your most primitive urges. I like to think Cardinal Wolsey would have understood and appreciated that.

I remember picking up two cartons of succulent local strawberries at the Trout Lake Farmers Market in East Vancouver one Saturday in early summer. On my way home, the berries’ heady perfume seduced me as I waited at the bus stop. I sat down on a bench and ate half my haul right there, juice dripping down my wrist and off my fingers. Just as I felt like I might pass out from the sheer pleasure of it, I glanced up to see an elderly Sikh man waiting nearby watching me. He just grinned and nodded.

If you are fortunate to get your hands on some fresh, local berries this season, don’t waste any time messing with them. Don’t sprinkle them with sugar or douse them in balsamic vinegar or syrup. And, heaven forbid, don’t bake or cook them into anything! Just plop them in a bowl, add a dollop of the thickest, sweetest, freshest organic cream you can find and sit down, wherever you are, and eat them.