Luscious Sweet Strawberries for Mother on Her Special Day

Mother’s Day in Mexico is always on May 10th, no matter what day of the week. I find that kind of comforting, just like Christmas is always on December 25. However, there might not always be time to pamper mother lavishly on a working weekday. What delicious treat spells love more than strawberries? Serving mother a bowl of strawberries with a dollop of crema, the local equivalent of crème fraîche, should bring her pure bliss. It does not get much better considering that zero kitchen skills are required.

Here in the Bajio it is strawberry time. At the weekly Tuesday fresh market at the Placita also called Tianguis, tables with patiently stacked pyramid-shaped piles of fragrant strawberries are a bright splash of red, among the other seasonal offerings. San Miguel is close to the city of Irapuato, which considers itself the strawberry center of Mexico, and, apparently people born there call themselves fresas.

Looking back at my own history with strawberries I might qualify for this distinction as well. In my early childhood, growing up in Denmark, I learned to love strawberries. The national dessert, Rødgrød med Fløde (don’t feel bad if you cannot pronounce this) is made from strawberries, which grow there in abundance, and, is always served topped with a big dollop of whipped cream.

My first visit to Mexico, by bus decades ago, was during strawberry season. Wherever the bus stopped, women surrounded us immediately offering bowls of fresas con crema. I literally filled myself with strawberries from bus stop to bus stop.

Strawberry jewlery, blouse, aprons....

Years later, I opened a strawberry crêpe (see recipe) concession at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, held for six weekends in Los Angeles and San Francisco, earning the title of “Strawberry Queen”! No wonder, we went through one ton of strawberries and 60 cases of whipped cream per weekend. Visitors started to bring me gifts with strawberry motifs, from cookie jars 

The wall paper

and silver spoons to fabrics for my costumes. When a friend came along with an armful of strawberry-patterned wallpaper, my husband decidedly put his foot down. 

One of the best gifts however was a book about the history of the strawberry. And what a history this sweet little berry has!

The name strawberry most likely comes from the word stray-berries, as the mother plant grows (straying) runners. However, today, the word strawberry makes more sense, since the low growing plants are often surrounded with straw to prevent the delicate berries from rotting should they lie on the moist earth. Today, plastic sheets replace the straw.

The tiny Fraise de bois

The tiny strawberries; generally referred to as fraise des bois or wild wood strawberry are already mentioned in early Greek and Roman literature. In the 13^th century they became very popular in European religious paintings, especially those depicting the Virgin Mary and Child. This was in part credited to the deep love St. Francis of Assisi expressed for the gifts of Mother Nature. It began to influence the style of religious paintings and book illuminations.

The tiny jewel-like strawberries which only grew wild, were a luxury that had to be foraged for, laboriously gathered and often presented to royalty as a special gift. When in 914 a citizen of Auvers France, named Julius de Berry presented his King with a gift of the fragrant berries, the king was so pleased that he knighted de Berry and changed his name to de Fraise, the French word for strawberry.

Almost 800 years later in 1712 an engineer and lieutenant in the French Army Intelligence Corps named Amédée Francois Frézier, a descendant of de Fraise, was sent on a secret reconnaissance mission, passing as a trader, to Peru and Chile. At that time, the then peaceful Spanish-French political connection was starting to be stressed and Frézier was sent to take stock of the military strength of the Spanish colonies, just in case the countries should go to war. His travels took him to every port in Peru and Chile and it was here in the town of Concepción that he discovered whole fields of red and white strawberries being cultivated.

For European standards they were exceptionally large, the seize of walnuts or even hens eggs, as he described them. He found them not to be quite as delicious as the tiny berries of France but still very good. He decided to bring several plants back to France to be cultivated in the king’s garden. I think today we would say the man had heavy strawberry Karma even if apparently he was not aware of the origin of his last name! For the voyage back, which took nearly six months, he had to get special permission from the ship’s captain to be supplied with fresh water to keep his plants alive. It is not known how many he took on board but 5 plants survived the voyage.

The plants did well in the king’s garden, however, with one important snag that occurred; they did not bear fruit. Frézier had unknowingly only brought female plants. His criteria had been to pick the plants with the biggest berries. After many decades of frustrating experiments by botanists all over Europe trying to successfully cultivate the big Chilean strawberry, eventually they struck gold with the help of Antoine Nicolas Duchesne, a botanist at the gardens of Versailles. He planted a row of native male strawberry plants next to the Chilean ones and it worked. The large fruited Chilean strawberry, with the help of its European cousin, paved the way for the strawberries we enjoy today.

We know that the people of the Americas, south and north, were incredibly skilled in plant cultivation. The Chileans probably already had spent millennium on developing their big strawberries, which they were cultivating on a large scale by the time the Spanish and later Frézier came along. Couldn’t they have just asked them how they did it?

Crêpes

I truly earned the title of the “Strawberry Queen” during my eight years as a concessionaire at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Every food booth had a specialty and mine was strawberry crêpes with whipped cream. The Faire was immensely popular; and, like a juggler, I learned to bake crêpes simultaneously with eight pans in order to fill demands; which on many days amounted to 2,500 servings.

Makes about 20-22 6-inch crêpes

1 cup            all purpose flour

2                   eggs

1 ¼ cup        milk (or more, depending on the size of your eggs and consistency of the flour)

¼ cup           butter (optional), melted

¼ tsp            salt

                     vegetable oil for frying

Place all the ingredients in a blender and mix until smooth. The batter should have the consistency of heavy cream. If necessary, add more milk. You can also do this by hand. Place the flour, eggs and salt in a bowl, mix lightly, then add milk and optional butter and whisk to a smooth and free of lumps batter.

Let the batter rest for at least 30 minutes. This can also be done hours in advance, then keep the batter in the refrigerator.

Heat a small amount of oil or butter in a 6-or 10-inch pan, depending how large a crêpe you would like. Pour in a thin layer of batter and fry until the batter is set and the underside is golden brown. Flip the crêpe with a spatula and brown on the other side. Stack finished crêpes on a plate and keep in a warm oven until ready to serve.

To serve, fill and garnish with your choice of filling. Crêpes can also be served with savory fillings, such as creamed spinach or seafood. There is hardly anything a crêpe does not like.

You can make the crêpes in advance and freeze them. Instead of stacking them when they are being fried, lay them out in a single layer on paper towels until they are completely cooled, then stack them, wrap in clear wrap and place in a freezer bag. To defrost, remove from the freezer and thaw at room temperature. To reheat, place them in an ungreased pan over medium heat or reheat them in the oven with your filling of choice.