I love strawberries. No, I mean, I really love them. But I don’t love cooked strawberries. Even strawberry jam, which I dutifully put up every season, leaves me a bit flat: so much of the joy of strawberries is their tart, delicate flavor—their liveliness—which is dulled irretrievably by heat. My usual "recipe" for seasonal strawberry consumption is: get home from Greenmarket; wash strawberries before putting away any other groceries, including perishables; immediately eat an alarming amount of them.
 
While that may be the best way to experience the joy of in-season berries, there are more civilized options. Adding sliced strawberries to a green (often spinach) salad has become commonplace, but the lackluster out-of-season specimens too often found in restaurant renditions bring down, rather than elevate, the dish.
 
Ezra Pound Cake’s version of the standard adds bite with peppery arugula instead of spinach; a classic balsamic vinaigrette, pecans for savor, and plenty of fresh ripe strawberries make this salad a stunner. Scrambled Hen Fruit incorporates orange segments, enhancing the sweet-tart flavor, and dresses the salad with a piquant poppy seed dressing. The poppy seeds add textural interest, and the colors are dazzling.
 
But what about strawberry desserts? To find recipes that preserve the sweet vibrancy of fresh strawberries, I turned (with some trepidation) to raw food’s corner of the blogosphere, and found some lovely ideas.  
 
Making this strawberry-chocolate “cream” pie from Rawmazing is a process—like many raw recipes, it’s got a lot of steps and a lot of ingredients—but the combination of strawberries, coconuts, macadamias, and chocolate sounds divine. And the presentation is lovely enough to make this a refreshing conclusion to a summer dinner party.
 
On the simpler side is this five-ingredient raw strawberry pie from Happy Foody. The filling is made of strawberries, dates, and lemon juice, served atop a date-nut crust—what better way to showcase the dazzling flavor of the season’s first fruit?
 
Unsurprisingly, strawberries are packed with vitamin C. They’re also a good source of dietary fiber and other trace nutrients, as well as the antioxidant phytonutrients that give the berries their bright red color. So pick up some newly-picked strawberries the next time you’re at your local market or farmstand, and try one of these fresh recipes. That is, if you can keep from eating them all first!

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