Storified by Lucette Delacroix· Sun, May 12 2013 18:42:15
This strawberry soup, adapted from The Pepperidge Farm Cook Book by Margaret Rudkin, is an elegant and exotic appetizer to a fancy and unforgettable, simple recipe for dinner. Serve it chilled in a wide glass or a pretty tiny bowl the way upscale fine dining restaurants in Europe does. It’s a perfect soup for the summer—tangy, sweet, surprising and refreshing. Spiked with sweet white wine, this dish also makes a romantic valentines dinner treat.
There are many kinds of sweet white wines or dessert wines you can use to make this recipe. Some of the preferable wines, which have a nice flavor that goes well with strawberries, are Ice wines, Moscato, Sherry, Tokay, and Sauternes. Ice wines are incredibly rich and ultra-sweet. Moscato is a semi-sparkling, lighter-bodied, aromatic, and semi-sweet wine with hints of an exotic spice. Sherry is a fortified wine, quite rich and very popular for use in desserts and cocktails. Tokay is a Hungarian dessert wine with super concentrated grape sugars, and has been the choice of royalty for centuries. Perhaps the most famous French dessert wine is Sauternes, which has an intense and profoundly sweet flavor with a lot of acidity, but is not exactly inexpensive.
Quick cooking tapioca is used in this recipe to thicken the soup. Tapioca comes from the roots of the cassava tree, which has a lot of starch and is a healthy alternative to cornstarch or flour for use as culinary thickeners. Unlike regular tapioca, which has pearl-like beads that is great to eat on its own, the quick cooking variety has small grains and can tolerate prolonged cooking and freezing. In the grocery, you might find it labeled as quick tapioca, instant tapioca, granulated tapioca, tapioca granules, or instant pearl tapioca. For use in this strawberry soup recipe, avoid products that are labeled as tapioca starch or tapioca pearls, which contain different preparations.
Wash the strawberries and remove the stems and caps. Pour into a pot and crush with a potato masher. Add the lemon juice and cover with water.
Add the sugar and tapioca. Bring to a gentle boil and cook for 15 minutes.
Remove the pot from the stove and add the wine. Chill completely in the refrigerator and serve cold.
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