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| Strawberry shortcake with thai basil cream |
SAD = Seasonal Affect Disorder
"Seasonal affective disorder (SAD), also known as winter depression, winter blues, summer depression, summer blues, or seasonal depression, is a mood disorder in which people who have normal mental health throughout most of the year experience depressive symptoms in the winter or summer, spring or autumn."
It's May 20th and I'm still wearing my winter coat. I am still wearing thick black tights to work. My spring / summer clothes are still packed up waiting to be brought to the forefront of my closet.
This is depressing.
With the weather absolute crap in London (although the long range 10-day forecast does have what appears to be a big yellow circle in the description). I think it's the sun, but it's been so long since I've seen it one can't really be sure.
With it winter outside I decided to make it spring inside. The past few weeks I've been buying up as many spring ingredients I could find and cooking away.
- Asparagus every which way (the best way was just steamed, covered in gruyere and baked on buttered brioche)
- Savoury rhubarb and cherry sauce (served with roasted chicken)
- Homemade rhubarb and cherry jam (I bought way too much rhubarb for the chicken)
- Strawberry shortcake with thai basil cream
As you can see from the photo above I keep forgetting to take photos of my cooking. Pathetic excuse I know. But in actuality, the strawberry shortcake was my favourite of the bunch anyway.
So where did the thai basil come in?
Saturday I was invited to a dinner party hosted by SA-A - hooray! SA-A and GT had been in Thailand last month and had the opportunity to practice their culinary prowess at a cooking school in Chiang Mai. They wanted to share (ahem, 'test' things out on a few friends).
When asked what I could bring I was first told that nothing was necessary - food stuff was covered. But then, well - somehow the possibility of "a second dessert" came up, so we went with that.
Now I didn't get the brief that I needed to bake something Thai, but I figured why not be inspired along with some East Sussex strawberries and see what we could come up with.
I thought about a few different variations with chocolate perhaps but what I couldn't get out of my mind was how much I love mint and fruit (ala fruity mojitos). I know that mint and basil are very different but somehow at the time, in my mind - I could use them interchangeably*. Luckily enough, without a doubt - it worked. The sweetness of the strawberries and the cream set of the mild bitterness of the basil and gave it that "je ne sais quois". It gave a traditional strawberry shortcake a "grown-up edge".
I would have said that generally it would be a dessert for a more mature palate but the next day I received a photo from SA-A. The lovely hostess had kept the leftovers and brought it to her two young nephews. The photo? Of one of them gobbling it up with wanton abandon.
*Note - my post dinner drink of fresh mint tea will not be replaced with fresh basil tea anytime soon.
