Soak Your Summer Fruits in the Booze Cause Life Is Short
There is no doubt that pie is the noblest form any summer fruit can take, but there are times when I crave a fruit dessert that doesn’t require heating my oven (or kitchen). At times like this, I turn (again) to booze and make some silly-simple, yet wine-soaked, delicious-tasting fruits.
This dessert is so easy to make that you hardly need a recipe, but The Kitchn still has it (and that’s a good thing). To make drunken and sweet strawberries, they combine about a pound of peeled strawberries, two glasses of dry fruity red wine, 1/4 cup brown sugar, and a couple of teaspoons of vanilla. Just sprinkle the berries with sugar, stir so that they are covered with a layer, pour in the wine and vanilla, stirring again to mix. Cover and refrigerate for a couple of hours to mix the flavors. Spoon it over ice cream, spoon onto cake, or simply eat from a bowl of cream.
But don’t stop at strawberries or even wine. There are many summer fruits to use in the drinking tub, and there are many drinks that you can choose from. Some combinations that I like:
- Rainier Cherries + Rosé Dry Wine: Don’t forget to cut the cherries in half and replace the brown sugar with the white one.
- Peaches + Nice Pie, Lambic, or Other Sour Beers: Brown sugar is fine in this beer .
- Blackberries + Ruby Port (buy something cheap): You can grate some fresh pepper to make it more mature.
- Watermelon + mezcal: Eliminate sugar and vanilla and simply sprinkle with layered salt.
- Figs + tempranillo: Keep brown sugar and vanilla, but top with fresh lemon zest.
If you want to be the real hero of your summer BBQ, just bring a whole buffet of fruit drinks and let everyone eat five a day while having fun.