So last night, I made that lovely pesto sauce that I mentioned in my last article. Seriously, if you didn’t make it to, do it tonight. I’m making another batch just to keep in the refrigerator for the future. I know I’ll use it again soon. Love that stuff.

More importantly, was the dessert – I wanted to go with the whole Italian theme so since the pasta was such a beautiful shade of green from the pesto, I went for white and red during dessert. Keeping with the Italian food, I put a little twist onto the traditional “strawberries and cream” – by this, I mean I raised the bar. It was too easy – and left my dinner guests pretty satisfied.

So for this recipe, I have no exact measurements. I guess the quantities you use will depend on how many desserts you have to make. I made four large desserts and two smaller ones – all with these ingredients:

three packages of strawberries
a sweet liquor (perhaps grand marinier… didn’t have that so i just used campari and orange juice)
300+/- ml heavy cream, whipped
250 g ricotta cheese (more or less)
8 crunchy dryish almond cookies or a handful of crushed almonds
sugar to taste

So I started off by washing the strawberries and removing the stems. I saved a few on the side where I didn’t remove the stems for decoration. I put them in a large bowl and tossed a little less than 1/4 cup of campari and a few splashes of orange juice on the strawberries. Let them soak up flavor in the refrigerator for about 3-4 hours (or even overnight would be nice).

After the strawberries have been marinating for a while, I put the almond cookies in my miniprimer and chopped them until they were very fine. They had the consistency of brown sugar when I was done. Next whip your heavy cream, adding some sugar to taste. I added about 2 tablespoons, but that wasn’t enough for my Argentine boyfriend. I probably should have added more for him. In another bowl, I broke down the ricotta cheese with a fork. Then with a rubber spatula, I gently stirred in about 1/4 of the whipped cream, and folded in the rest.

I then began layering the strawberries in their juices and the whipping cream / ricotta mix until I filled the glass. I topped it off with a few teaspoons of the crushed almond cookies and a fresh strawberry. It tastes great after it’s been in the refrigerator for a few hours.

The ricotta and almonds gave this dish such a beautiful texture and there was a lot of flavor from the strawberries soaked in campari – So that was the end of another beautiful St. Joseph’s day!

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