Strawberries and the garden of earthly delights

Late spring is a time of new beginnings in the Towerwater garden. It is a time of expectation, hope and delight. Expectation of how all the seeds and seedlings will turn the garden into a culinary feast. Hope, that some of the seedlings will survive the myriad of pests devouring them before they can even make their second set of leaves. Delight, when Mother Nature blesses us with her abundance.

Early in the season one delights in the few vegetables available for harvesting. The small pickings of late peas, carrots, beetroot, spinach, curly kale, and kohlrabi. In the fruit section we can enjoy some paw paws and lots of strawberries.

The strawberry bed is a delight for the senses. Walking past the grapevines into the vegetable garden, the fragrance of ripe strawberries fills the air. You smell them before you notice them with their plump ripeness among the deep green of their leaves.

The simple pastoral scene of a strawberry bed full of ripe fruit, conjures up the pleasures of summer desserts. It is as if one can taste the red fruit bursting into one’s mouth simply by sight. The view of the ordered bed of strawberries and beds of vegetable seedlings is a far cry from Hieronymus Bosch’s painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights, which he painted between 1490 and 1510.

Details depicting strawberries in the painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights

What made me think of the painting was the depiction of people enjoying strawberries in the centre panel of the triptych. Strange how some paintings can make an impact on one. I can’t say that it is a favourite painting of mine. It is more the fantastical depiction of people enjoying pleasures of the flesh in what I would describe as a futuristic garden. I found it very different from other Renaissance paintings.

In June 2001, at the end of my six-week backpacking holiday in Spain, I visited the Museo del Prado in Madrid, where I saw the painting.

Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, oil on oak panels, 205.5 cm × 384.9 cm

One can appreciate the detail in the actual painting much better because it is quite large. It is a painting filled with fantastical detail. Looking at the triptych, it is clear that what separates paradise, depicted by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in the panel on the left, and Hell depicted in the panel on the right, is earthly sin, depicted in the central panel. There are other fruit and berries offered seductively from one person to another in this scene, but somehow the strawberry is elevated to a different level as a symbol of earthly pleasures.

Did the Garden of Earthly Delights cement the idea of the strawberry as an aphrodisiac, perfect for seduction? Perhaps the fact that the fruit is shaped like a red heart has something to do with it.  

I don’t know if my strawberries seduce the myriad of pests that eat them, but if I look at the amount of fruit that they can damage overnight, I can imagine them enjoying the ripe fruit like the characters depicted by Hieronymus Bosch in his painting. Luckily, we manage to rescue at least 2kg of strawberries a week at the peak of the season.

Hulling strawberries on the kitchen stoep

The picking of strawberries is enough to make me reach for one of my cookbooks in the Towerwater library to find a way of preserving these “earthly delights” for a teatime or cocktail seduction. With enough stock of last year’s strawberry liqueur left, we opted to make strawberry jam this year.

Towerwater organic strawberry jam

Ingredients:

2 kg Organic strawberries
Juice of 2 lemons (90ml)
1.8 kg Sugar (warmed)

Method:
Hull the strawberries and weigh them. You will need at least 1.8kg of hulled fruit. Halve the strawberries and place them in a ceramic bowl. You can lightly crush them, depending on how fine you would like the fruit to be in your jam.

Put the strawberries and lemon juice in a preserving pot an bring to the boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 5-10 minutes, or until the strawberries are soft.

Add the warmed sugar to the strawberry mixture and dissolve the sugar over a low heat.

Increase the heat and boil the mixture rapidly, without stirring, for 15 minutes or until it reaches setting point. Remove the pot from the heat to test. The sugar thermometer should read 104°C. If you do not have a sugar thermometer, you can use the cold plate test.

With the pan off the heat, lightly skim off any scum from the surface of the jam. Cool the jam slightly.

Pour the jam into warmed sterilized jars, to within 3mm of the tops. Seal the jars and label.

Notes:

Warmed Sugar – Sugar will dissolve quicker in the fruit mixture if it is warmed first. Put the oven on its lowest setting. Weigh the sugar and place it in an oven proof bowl. Warm the sugar in the oven for about 15 minutes.

Cold plate test – place a saucer in the freezer. Drop a little jam on the cold plate. If the jam forms a skin, and wrinkles when it is pushed with a finger, it should have reached setting point.

I would like to think of Towerwater’s garden as a delight where one can be seduced to relax and enjoy serenity. Perhaps with tea and scones served with organic strawberry jam.

Other Strawberry posts on this blog

Black pepper and strawberry gin sorbet 

Strawberries and the pursuit of happiness

Strawberry Vinegar

Extroverted Strawberries

Daiquiris at Dusk

Black pepper and strawberry gin sorbet

On the afternoon following our visit to Silverthorn, I could bottle the strawberry liqueur that I made in November. The lovely red colour of the strawberry liqueur spoke of Christmas while the sweet strawberry flavour was a reminder of the bowls of fresh strawberries we have been enjoying from the garden.

After bottling the liqueur, I was left with a bowl of gin-soaked strawberries with a flavour that sported just a hint of pepper. As a firm believer in ‘waste not, want not’, I decided to liquidise the fruit and peppercorns and make a sorbet.

The sorbet was a real treat and perfect for a mature audience. It had the sweet fragrance of strawberries reminiscent of childhood picnics in summer. That quickly, but gently, turned into a seductive mouthful of gin and strawberries ending with a mischievous hint of black pepper.

Once again, we enjoyed a once off culinary treat from the Towerwater garden and cellar. I think its starting to feel like Christmas. 

Strawberries and the pursuit of happiness

The fabric of the weekend was embroidered with the uncertain thread of the elections in America. This election, marred with so much unhappiness, got me thinking about the second sentence in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The pursuit of happiness got me thinking. Happiness must surely be relative to each person’s situation. What makes me happy does not necessarily make the person next to me happy, and vice versa. I agree that every person has the right to be happy. Towerwater in a sense, is the prime venue for our pursuit of happiness.

The opportunity to enjoy a place where we can create, and dream, brings the happiness that we have worked towards for many years. To find happiness walking through the garden, catching the fragrance of the freshly opened St Joseph lilies in the orchard, or the ripe strawberries in the vegetable garden, is a blessing.

November at Towerwater is heavy with the fragrance of strawberries. In an organic garden, you compete for these sweet delicacies with a myriad of creatures. Although the thrushes are always busy in the garden, I don’t think that they steal the strawberries.

When I think of strawberry thieves, I always think of William Morris’s classic and popular design of the Arts and Crafts period. In 1883 he successfully used the indigo-discharge method to print his design entitled Strawberry Thief. The design is based on the thrushes that William Morris found stealing strawberries in the kitchen garden of his country home in Oxfordshire. I am sure, that for William Morris, the pursuit of happiness must have been one of creating beautiful things. That is why he said, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful"

Detail of Strawberry Thief by William Morris

Even though the competition for the strawberries in the garden is very stiff, we still manage to pick abundant bowls of the fruit. Bowls of strawberries, allows me to be creative in their use and enjoyment. 

I use them in cocktails. A refreshing strawberry martini is enough reward for a day spent working in the garden. Having such an abundance of strawberries, provided the perfect opportunity to make some Towerwater strawberry liqueur. In this way, I can spread the happiness that the spring garden brings, deep into summer and perhaps even winter.

Towerwater Strawberry Liqueur

Ingredients:

500g fresh organic strawberries

1ml black pepper

750ml gin

200g (250ml) sugar

200ml dry white wine

Method:

Wash the strawberries, remove the leaves and stems, and cut them in quarters.

Place the strawberries and black pepper in a clean sterilized glass jar which has a lid. Add the gin. Mix the sugar and wine in a heavy based saucepan and stir at a low temperature until the sugar has dissolved. Bring to a boil and boil for seven minutes. Remove the syrup from the heat and let it cool down. Add the cold syrup to the strawberry and gin mixture. Seal the jar and let it stand in a warm spot for two weeks. Shake the jar twice a day.

Pour the mixture through a clean sieve first and then through a double layer of cheese cloth. Pour the liqueur into a clean, sterilized bottle and seal. The liqueur is ready for use after a month.

I place the jar of what is to become strawberry liqueur in two weeks’ time, in the cellar among the jars of seasonal preserves. Marmalades, olives, pickled lemons, quince chutney, green fig preserve, and many other jars filled with the happiness that each season brings. Our pursuit of happiness at Towerwater is grounded in embracing a simple life filled with the creativity of reviving traditional arts and crafts.

More blog posts about strawberries:

Spring on a plate

Extroverted Strawberries

Daiquiris at Dusk