Nigel Slater’s recipe for strawberries with passion fruit

There are endless ways to deal with the strawberry season that don’t involve smothering them in cream and sugar. I find the most useful are those I can enjoy for dessert or breakfast; simple ways that flatter the berries.

Remove the leaves from 400g of strawberries, then cut all but the smallest ones in half. Cut 4 passion fruit in half and remove their seeds, juice and flesh into a bowl with a teaspoon. Squeeze the juice from 1 large orange and add to the passion fruit. Stir in 1 tsp of balsamic vinegar and the merest pinch of caster sugar. Taste and tweak as necessary. Add the strawberries to the sauce and set aside in the fridge to marinate for about 30 minutes. Serve the marinated berries with ice-cream, fromage frais or by themselves. Enough for 4

You could introduce a little alcohol, too – a dash of cassis, the blackcurrant liqueur, is good here in place of the balsamic vinegar.

You can make a thicker sauce for the berries by puréeing 250g of strawberries in a blender or food processor and then stirring it into the passion fruit. This is also good with a mixture of raspberries and redcurrants: a summer pudding without the bread.

This is an uplifting sauce for breakfast. Stir it into your overnight oats or bircher muesli as you eat.

It is also good as an accompaniment for cheesecake or for serving with chewy meringues.

I have on occasion used this as a layer in a summer trifle, spooning the fruit and their marinade over the sponge fingers then applying the layers of custard and cream.

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