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Roasted Strawberries with Zabaglione

Hello everybody!

Somehow, we are almost in July. It feels like the year has barely started, yet it's already halfway done! Time seems to be flying by, and I am struggling to keep up! This week, I had so many plans and so many new recipes I want to test for you guys, but here we are, it's already Friday, and I barely scratched the surface of what I wanted to achieve. Thankfully I do have two fabulous recipes for you this week. First up, for free subscribers, is a beautiful dish of roasted strawberries with zabaglione. For paid subscribers, I have a guide to making ciabatta, which somehow seems like a very summery bread? Maybe it’s because it works great for pan con tomate, which is a dish on my mind constantly during the summer.

Guide To Making No Knead Ciabatta

This dessert is honestly a bit of a scramble, a result of feeling scatterbrained, an attempt to make something delicious that was both incredibly easy and also only used what I had on hand in the moment. With no idea of what to make I was incredibly thankful to have a punnet of strawberries in the fridge, something around which I could make a wonderful dessert for the weekend.

When it comes to summer fruit, I like to keep things relatively simple, making desserts that highlight the fruit rather than covering them up in a waterfall of other flavours. When strawberries are good, they need nothing else to shine. One of my favourite ways to serve strawberries is to roast them. In the heat of the oven, they turn slightly jammy, and the intensity of their flavour gets turned up to eleven. You can serve them hot, if you like, but I prefer to serve them chilled, perfect with just a dash of cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream. You could, of course, pair them with custard, but sometimes I just cant be bothered; too many bowls, too much stirring, too high a risk of scrambled egg. Instead, I would suggest making a simple zabaglione (sabayon if you’re French). Zabaglione, a classic Italian recipe, is a mixture of egg yolks, sugar and alcohol that are whisked for a few minutes over a Bain Marie (one bowl, one whisk, simple) until thick and pillowy. Think of it as a cross between a mousse and a custard.

One of the things I love about a zabaglione is that it is made with the simplest of ratios, 1:1:1. 1 egg yolk, 1 tbsp sugar and 1 tbsp liquid. To make things doubly simple, you also want to use 1 yolk per person. Incredibly easy to remember, right? The liquid element is traditionally marsala, but you can really use anything. I don’t ever have Marsala in the house (does anyone?), but I do love blanco vermouth, so that's what I used. I have, however, seen versions that use champagne, port, sherry and so on. If you’re stuck with what to use, think about what you are serving the zabaglione with and start there; what would work well as a pairing? The vermouth is sweet and herbal and made for a very summery dessert. Depending on the alcohol you choose, you can also adapt the sweetness to ensure the sauce doesn’t end up too sweet. For example, with the blanco vermouth, I would use 3 tbsp instead of 4, but with dry white wine or champagne, I’d stick with 4 tbsp.

Roasted Strawberries with Zabaglione

Serves 4

Roasted Strawberries

600g strawberries

3 tbsp caster sugar

Juice and zest of 1 lime or lemon

1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste

Zabaglione

4 large egg yolks

4 tbsp alcohol or other liquid

4 tbsp caster sugar

1/4 tsp vanilla bean paste

For the strawberries, rinse and hull them before slicing them in half. In a large bowl, toss the fruit with the remaining ingredients. As I was making this dish with what I had on hand, I used lime, but generally, I pair strawberries with lemon but honestly, any citrus would work well in this situation. Scrape the fruit and all the liquid in the bowl onto a rimmed baking tray and spread into an even layer. Bake at 190ºC (170ºC Fan) for about 20 minutes until the berries turn soft and squishy but not broken down. Remove and scrape everything into a bowl or tupperware container and refrigerate for a few hours before serving. You can, of course, serve these hot straight from the oven but in that case, I would pair them with something chilled, for a nice contrast, like cream or ice cream.

For the zabaglione, add all of the ingredients to a large bowl and pop it over a pan of simmering water. Whisk constantly for about 8 minutes or until the mixture is light and airy and looks like an airy custard. Traditionally this mixture is served hot as soon as it is made, but you can also serve it cold. This is my favourite way to serve it, but there is one additional step if this is also what you want to do. You can either fold through a little whipped cream to stabilise it or to prevent it from separating, as it sits in the fridge, remove the bowl from the heat and place it into a bowl of ice water and whisk until the zabaglione is cool. At this point, you can refrigerate the zabaglione for a couple of hours before it needs to be used. If serving it chilled, you can make it a couple of hours before serving, but any longer than that, you risk the custard splitting.

To serve, spoon some of the strawberries into a bowl and top with a large dollop of the zabaglione.

The strawberries, once roasted, can be refrigerated for 2-3 days.