In moments when you’re pining for decent Mexican food, bagels, pho, or other near-impossible-to-find foods, or when you’ve had one too many bucket of koshary, or when Egypt’s cuisine is just getting you down, it helps take a minute to ruminate on one thing that Egypt has definitely got going for it foodwise: delicious, fresh, bursting-with-flavor fruits and vegetables – for cheap. Strawberries certainly find themselves on my list of favorite fruit, especially here – no where else have I tasted strawberries so sweet and so flavorful. Yet even with such a sweet spot for them, I have a hard time finishing a tray before the mold starts creeping in… especially now, at the end of the season, when the fruit doesn’t seem to last as long before going bad. So as a way to salvage fruit that is otherwise soon headed for the bin, we offer a quick, easy compote recipe. Of course you do have to start before your fruit has gone off, so don’t wait too long…
Recipe after the jump.
Strawberry Grapefruit Compote
Strawberries
Grapefruit zest (that would be the rind, grated)
Sugar
Water
Oh, it’s so easy!
1. Chop the strawberries.
2. Zest the grapefruit (that means grating the peel of the grapefruit).
3. Add the strawberries and grapefruit zest to a pot. Add sugar to taste, and a couple teaspoons of water.
4. Simmer for about 10 minutes, until the strawberries are soft. Mash with a fork if you prefer smaller pieces in your compote. Watch the pot; as the strawberries cook, the compote will become more liquidy, but if all the water boils off, add more.
Presto! We self-indulgently recommend pairing the compote with Honey Stella Bread, or drizzled over vanilla ice cream. Store the remaining compote in a jar in the fridge, it should keep for a couple weeks. And I know, if you were looking for specific measurements above, you didn’t find them. But amounts of grapefruit zest and sugar depend on how sour and sweet, respectively, you want your compote. I go with about 1 teaspoon zest and 1/2 teaspoon sugar per cup of strawberries, and know that as you cook the compote longer, it gets more sweet and less tangy. One of the best parts about a compote is that it’s great to experiment with. Strawberries and grapefruit are favorite fruits of mine, and the sweet/tangy blend the combination provides is delightful, but the process is simple enough and works with all kinds of fruit, so experiment!
