Strawberry

A colorful trio of fresh fruits, coupled with the spiciness of jalapeño pepper, enlivens the flavor of mild tilapia.

This exciting, inviting fruit salad is especially delicious served with grilled pork or chicken.

Have fun at breakfast with this terrific taste combination of mini waffles, cinnamon-sugared fruits, and yogurt. Or serve later in the day with frozen yogurt as a different way to enjoy an old-fashioned ice cream “cone.”

Get up and go with this satisfying breakfast drink. For a frosty presentation, put empty glasses in the freezer for just a few minutes while you are preparing the drink.

Turn a serving of your favorite fruit into a delectable dessert with an extra-easy sauce reminiscent of cheesecake.

Serve this brilliantly colored salad of mixed salad greens, blueberries, mandarin oranges, and pears with Grilled Sirloin with Honey-Mustard Marinade (page 176).

Serve this chilled fruit soup as a light summer appetizer or with your favorite sandwich or salad.

This sparkling drink is ideal as a refreshing spritzer for brunch or on a hot summer day.

When strawberries are in season, this recipe is not only extremely affordable, it’s amazingly scrumptious. With each bite, you taste fresh strawberries followed by a hit of chocolate that lingers perfectly. I’ve come to love this recipe as a topping for low-fat whole-grain waffles and low-fat pancakes, as a dip for cinnamon flatbread sticks, and even as a topping for fat-free vanilla or chocolate ice cream. Whether your strawberries were cold or not when you started preparing this tapenade, it’s best to refrigerate it until they are fully chilled after being mashed.

Gina: These delicious waffles are crispy, full of flavor, and loaded with crunchy pecans. You can serve them the traditional way, with syrup and butter, or jazz them up with sautéed bananas and/or fresh strawberry sauce. Either way, it’s an unforgettable way to begin the day.

Gina: Oh boy. When I realized the importance of Strawberry Shortcut Cake to the Neely boys, I knew I had to get baking and learn this recipe! The first step was getting permission from Momma Neely to make the cake. Let’s just say baking the cake was the easy part! Momma Neely always brought this cake to our house on special occasions. Didn’t matter if the occasion was a birthday, a graduation, or a good report card. It got to the point where our girls would say, “I need to call Grandma Neely and tell her about my report card so she can bring me some shortcut cake.” I like to call it a shortcut cake because we use a boxed mix. But no one will ever be able to tell when you serve it.

Gina: One is juicy and sweet, the other sassy and tart, and the glue that holds them together? Plenty of sugar! Strawberry and rhubarb are made for each other, kinda like Pat and me. I love this pie because there is just one crust to roll, the filling is a snap, and the crumbly topping adds another layer of sweet crunch as it bakes down into the fragrant fruit filling. The result is a pie that’s as much fun to eat as a bar cookie.

This recipe was created for my friend Bill, who told me he couldn’t get his daughter to eat fruit. I asked him what her favorite food was and the response was “ice cream.” (Well, what would you say?) These pops are mostly fruit, with just a little bit of “ice cream” made from low-fat Greek yogurt and sugar substitute. But when the pureed fruit was mixed with it, she couldn’t tell the difference. At just about 60 calories a pop, you can eat these all summer long.

“To truly mousse or not to mousse?” That was the question. At first I thought I’d find a great low-fat packaged mousse mix and turn the flavors up by adding some interesting ingredients. I tried it...and decided you deserved better. This is as close as I could get to a real chocolate mousse, made with egg whites and chocolate and very little fat.

When you think about adding flavor to foods in the most healthful way possible, you think about the most intense flavor vehicles you can find. That’s why this recipe calls for vanilla bean. The tiny seeds inside pack a wallop of this most delicate and beloved taste. If you can’t find good strawberries, try whole raspberries or small slices of ripe peach.

When I worked at Macy’s Marketplace in New York City years ago, we had a huge Italian import sale in honor of Columbus Day weekend. As part of the promotion, we handed out cookbooks entitled Columbus’s Menu, given to us by the Italian Trade Commission. The book listed adaptations of recipes as old as Columbus sailing the ocean blue. One of my favorites was a roast pork loin with balsamic- and basil-macerated strawberries. Here’s how you can make it in less than 30. Serve with salad and crusty bread.

This simple preparation for fresh strawberries has long been a favorite of mine. The almond flavor of amaretto melds perfectly with the sweetness and aroma of lush, ripe strawberries.

Smoothies are superb served with pizza meals. Try this or any of the other smoothies in this chapter the next time you make pizza. I’ve suggested these smoothies as part of some of the menus in Chapter Six, A Flash in the (Pizza) Pan.

Eggs, sugar, and flour in equal measure are the basis of this simple cake, which bakes in just 20 minutes and can be filled with fruit or berries in season.

Here’s a beautiful and special dessert: ivory canederli, sitting in a crimson pool of fresh strawberry sauce. Whereas the savory Canederli al Cumino (page 9) are fried, these delicate morsels are poached and have a very light texture. They are formed from a dough of ricotta, eggs, and flour instead of reconstituted bread. These are best when cooked just before you serve them (although the sauce can be made ahead), and in the recipe I give you a sequence of steps to streamline the procedure. Cook the strawberry sauce first, if you haven’t already, then proceed to make the canederli. Follow my instructions for poaching them—it’s important to cook them all the way through—and you’ll have perfect canederli in minutes. Once your guests taste them, I know they will tell you that this dessert was worth waiting for.

THE GOODS This toasty twist on oatmeal will make you smile. Oats' B vitamins trigger production of mood-sweetening serotonin (454 calories per serving).