Saturate the season's best strawberries with black pepper, sugar and balsamic

For about three quarters of the year, I make do with merely passably flavorful frozen berries that I deploy to chuck into smoothies and brighten up my oatmeal. Then June rolls around, and those first beautiful, dark fresh strawberries hit the farmer's market, and I remember how strawberries are actually supposed to taste. It's a heady time in my home, one marked by the constant presence of teal containers brimming with bright red fruit.

Typically, I'd be thinking a lot right now about pies and crumbles and shortcakes. But my older daughter was recently diagnosed with a gluten intolerance, so I'm trying to be supportive in any non-cake and crust ways I can. And when a warm wave of recent days made it all the easier to resist baking, I found myself looking at the strawberries on the kitchen counter and thinking of a classic that grabbed me from the first time I read Nigella Lawson's "How to Eat."

The pairing of strawberries and balsamic vinegar — as zingy partners for each other either in a crisp salad or sophisticated dessert — isn't new. But the way Nigella wrote about it, noting that "The balsamic vinegar seems to make the red of the strawberries against it shine with the clarity of stained-glass windows," made a simple formula seem like a downright spiritual experience. She was, as usual, correct.

For years, I've unquestioningly leaned on "How to Eat's" easy formula of steeping sliced berries in vinegar and sugar, and then adding a warming flourish of cracked black pepper that I picked up from a clever dinner party host years ago. 

But revisiting Lawson's words this week, I was struck by her note on the vinegar — urging the reader to use "the best you can afford." Frankly, "the best I can afford" lately, especially after plunking down a queen's ransom for in season strawberries, is not very much at all. And while I know that what passes for balsamic vinegar in most supermarket aisles is not real, aged Italian vinegar but a cheap facsimile, I'm not in a place in my life where I can splurge a hundred or so dollars on the good stuff from Modena.

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Instead, however, I can take a few minutes to make a slick, syrupy cheat's vinegar that takes my strawberries, and everything else, to the next level. America's Test Kitchen has a brilliant recipe for "instant aged balsamic vinegar" that involves simmering the vinegar with sugar and port until it resembles something you'd see dribbled on your cheese course at a very expensive restaurant. I don't keep port on hand, so I skipped it altogether here and the results were still strikingly, palate deceivingly good. I also scaled far back on the sugar for the macerated berries, letting the vinegar play a more starring role.

What I wound up with was a beautifully complex dessert that was at once sweet and tart and spicy. It also happened to be gluten-free and vegan. Best of all, though, it made me feel that for the rest of this fleeting, magical strawberry season, the best I can afford is the best, period.

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Inspired by America's Test Kitchen and "How to Eat" by Nigella Lawson

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