It was sunny and warm on Friday, but not too hot (this is, after all, North Carolina, and things can heat up pretty quickly around here), so Dan and I decided to take our around-the-corner grandsons strawberry picking after school. They didn't need much convincing. We've been in a drought lately, but Lyons Farm out in Creedmoor has irrigated their fields, and the berries were ripe for the picking. The boys, one almost 7, the other 4 3/4, remembered last year's excursion and needed only a quick refresher on berry-picking (no green or pale ones, don't pull them off the stems, don't step on the plants). No eating berries we haven't paid for either, well, except who can resist snitching a few sun-warmed, sweet, perfectly ripe berries as they pick?
At the farmstand where we paid for our haul, there was some other produce for sale, including rhubarb, a favorite of my husband. So we bought some rhubarb too. We dropped the boys off back at their house, where they each had to assemble their own personally labeled bowl of berries, and then went home ourselves, where I sliced some, pureed others, and mixed the two together for noshing or stirring into yogurt. Dan is an early riser as well as a jam maker, and by the time I awoke the next morning, he had a big pot of cut-up, sugared strawberries already prepped and macerating.
But there were still plenty of berries left. As I ate my breakfast, I was doing what I do pretty much every day of my life, reading a cookbook, in this case Joan Nathan's wonderful foodoir (food + memoir = foodoir!), My Life in Recipes. Nathan is the doyenne of Jewish cooking in America, and I just adore her. I own several of her cookbooks and even had the good fortune to attend a cooking demonstration she did in Chapel Hill some years ago, where I was apparently the only shiksa there, happily surrounded by a roomful of fabulous Jewish women who love to cook.
As I was perusing Chapter 20, Motherhood and Raising Children, there, on page 220, was a recipe for Rhubarb Strawberry Crisp, which Joan’s friend Barbara Aledort had made for the tea party she threw for Nathan’s 40th birthday back in 1983, and which Nathan described as “[t]hen and now. . .a favorite dish which I have made throughout the years. . .” Nathan ends the recipe by instructing: “Serve it with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.” Not only did we have the rhubarb and strawberries, sitting in the fridge was some excellent heavy cream left over from Easter which was not going to last much longer, so BINGO!
It seemed a shame to plan such a dessert without others to enjoy it with us. Sitting on the counter was the book Shaker Songs: A Celebration of Peace, Harmony, And Simplicity, which a friend who knows of my love for all things Shaker had recently gifted me not knowing I already had a copy, and which I was excited to give in turn to musician friends of ours. Dan texted them asking if they wanted to come over for dessert, and the reply was an immediate and enthusiastic “YES! What time?”
The crisp, like most homespun desserts, was not difficult to put together. Nathan unpretentiously advises the cook to “pinch together” the flour-brown sugar-oatmeal-nut-butter topping “with your fingers.” (Chef Jacques Pepin was once asked what his favorite piece of kitchen equipment was, and he answered, “My hands!” I always trust someone who tells me to touch the food.)
At 7 p.m. the cream was whipped, and some of my favorite dishes and spoons set out for serving on our little screened porch. I eased the fragrant crisp out of the oven and the doorbell rang. Joan tells us that the crisp should only be cooled slightly before serving, and I was elated with my near-perfect timing.
The crisp was, I am happy to report, delicious, the company delightful, the conversation lively and wide-ranging (grandchildren, family, renovations, retirement), the Shaker songbook appreciated. What is better than breaking bread (okay, eating dessert) with good friends on a lovely spring evening? Not much, I think. Not much.
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