Strawberry Jam Made with Port Wine

It’s strawberry season at the farmers markets in my area. I look forward to this time of year, and always take full advantage of the abundance of this wonderful fruit. While we eat a lot of them fresh, I like to use them in a variety of recipes, including salads, soups, smoothies and more. This year, I decided to make jam, and since I love cooking with wine, I thought I would substitute port for the water in this super simple recipe.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of cleaned, hulled, coarsely chopped strawberries (organic or local)
• 1 cup of port wine
• 1 cup of sugar (I used organic fair trade)
• juice of 1 lemon

Place all of the ingredients in a thick-bottomed saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently to keep it from burning, and frequently scraping it from the sides of the pan.

Cook until thickened (about 30-40 minutes).

Pour into a clean container, and store in the refrigerator. Eat within 2 weeks (this should be absolutely no problem). Enjoy on toast, or as a glaze for meat dishes.

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How to Make Cold Strawberry Soup

This morning I made a trip to my local farmers market. I was happy to see that, even though it’s a bit late in the season for them, the strawberries were still available in abundance. I picked out two pints of these perfect looking berries, and decided that I would make my seasonal strawberry specialty — cold strawberry soup.

I started by washing the strawberries, then hulling and quartering them, saving a few to eat while I made the soup. 

I added 1/2 cup of organic whole milk yogurt, 1/2 cup of organic cane sugar and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. I then set the blender to the lowest setting, and blended the mixture for about 3 minutes, until it looked completely smooth. The yogurt adds a nice bit of tartness to the soup, but if you prefer, you can substitute it with milk or half and half. Also, I found that 1/2 cup of sugar was a bit on the sweet side — I think this is because the strawberries were so incredibly sweet on their own. If you are using grocery store strawberries, this amount of sugar should be fine, but feel free to adjust it to your own palate.

Once the mixture was completely blended, I stirred in 1/4 cup of Prosecco. You can leave this out, or you can use any type of white wine, champagne, cava or sparkling wine that you have on hand.

Chill mixture in refrigerator for at least 1 hour. Serve with a sprig of fresh mint for garnish, and enjoy! It’s best if eaten within 24 hours. This recipe makes 4 servings, or 2 very generous ones!

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