Waffles with Strawberry Conserve

This year we decided to skip a CSA share in favor of spending more time/money at the greenmarkets and picking and choosing our produce.  After 3 years as an active CSA member, this was a hard decision, but in the end, it really seemed like greenmarketing (yes, i just made that word up.  feel free to use it :) ) would better suit our lifestyle, plus, i wanted a chance to try out other farms & other products, something that the effort of using up our CSA share often prevented me from doing in the past.

In addition to picking up squash and greens and bread and even local beer, we've been very interested in seasonal fruit.  and right now, thats strawberries.  The greenmarket strawberries are better than anything you'll get in your local grocery store - they dont hold a candle, size-wise - but when it comes to flavor, they really cant be beat.  That little bit of knowledge makes them hard to pass up.

However, we're still us - meaning we still overbuy and underuse.  So when it rolled around to Friday and i realized that last weekend's strawberries were still in the fridge, i was kinda mad at myself...  how could we let those beauties go to waste?  Luckily, we have the crappiest refrigerator on earth - it near-freezes everything on the top shelf, while the rest is the correct temperature.  When it comes to forgotten foods, this can be a total blessing, as often things are preserved beyond their normal life.  So when i finally pulled out those remaining strawberries, they were a little bit past their prime, but nowhere near the mess they should have been, and the first thing that came to my mind was strawberry conserve.

I dont really know what the technical definition of a conserve is, but whatever, this stuff is REALLY good...  a couple of hours of passive time and a few minutes of active time yielded some of the best strawberry sauce i've ever had...  Of course, once you have a container of yummy strawberry stuff, you need something to eat it with (as eating it with a spoon, while yummy, isnt exactly advisable...) so I immediately declared there would be waffles the next morning.

We had it for breakfast, but its sweet enough that you could certainly make a pretty excellent dessert - especially with a scoop of vanilla ice cream - out of it...  Either way, you just need to make it soon.

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Waffles with Strawberry Conserve
courtesy of Bon Appetit and Food.com with minor modification by me


For the conserve:
1.5 c strawberries, hulled & cut in half
1/4 c sugar
the peel of 1/4 of a lemon - including the pith (white part)

***

Place all ingredients in a saucepan, stir to combine and cover.
Let sit for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.  Strawberries will release juices and the sugar will melt into the juices.

Turn the stove on to medium and simmer for about 3 - 4 minutes.  Once berries have softened, remove them with a slotted spoon and place in a jar.

Continue to simmer the juice for 2 - 3 minutes, until it begins to thicken up a bit.  Remove from heat, remove lemon peel and pour the syrupy juice over the berries.

Seal the jar and refrigerate.


For the waffles:
1 1/3 c all purpose flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
2 eggs, separated
1/2 c butter (1 stick), melted
1 3/4 c skim milk

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

***

Combine flour, baking powder, salt & sugar in a bowl and whisk to combine.

Add the egg yolks, melted butter, skim milk & vanilla to the dry ingredients and stir to combine.

In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until they form soft peaks.

Gently fold egg whites into the rest of the batter.

Follow the instructions for your waffle iron to cook.  As for how much batter to use:  the instructions to our waffle iron indicated 2 different amounts, one for a thinner batter and one for a thicker batter.  I found that an amount right in the middle of these two yielded the best results.  I also found that setting the browning level just slightly above average worked best.

***

Spoon conserve over warm waffles.  Eat as is or add powdered sugar, bananas (shown above), ice cream, whipped cream or any combination of the above if you are feeling particularly decadent.