Ingredient of the Week: Strasberry

Half strawberry - Half raspberry. All yummy.

One of my awesome housemates at uni developed a thing called “a pembonym”. It related to the splicing of two words to create a new one, saving time and causing mirth. So, souvenirs bought at the zoo were rendered “zoovenirs”, a spare ariel becomes a “spariel” and brilliantly, you no longer need to order fresh vegetables at dinner, just “freshtables”.

It is silly and wonderful and I still find myself making my own pembonyms from time to time. Try creating one yourself! (and let me know what you come up with in the comments…) and really as time is money, yah yah yah, you’ll save bags of cash in the process.

Now, this pembonym just wrote itself. Shopping in Waitrose on the Kings Road today, on the way home from work, I spied these little blighters. A punnet of teeny strasberries. A quick google reveals that the strasberry was “born” in South America in the 1900s but virtually disappeared for the last half century until some Dutch growers rediscovered it. On sale in certain shops, like Waitrose for a couple of quid over summer months, they come marked “limited edition speciality berries” – how thoroughly exciting.

They are tiny, with deeply imbedded dark seeds and an aromatic sweet smell. They taste like a juicier, sweeter version of strawberries and are quite lovely. Nothing, just nothing, can beat fresh English strawberries – the best ones are those illicitly popped into your mouth when you’re Picking-Your-Own but these were gorgeous sweet little poppets, which I smothered in ice-cream and scoffed. Lovely.

p.s. you may have noticed that this blog was born 4 months ago, and yet this is only the second of my much trumpeted “ingredients of the week” posts. I have decided only to feature an ingredient when it catches my eye and clearly this is only once in a blue moon, so even though this category isn’t called “ingredient of the every-so-often” I hope you get the gist, yeah?