Middle Eastern Agrodolce Strawberries

I couldn’t resist buying the strawberries that were staring me in the face at the supermarket last week. I’m actually not a big fan of strawberries (I prefer raspberries, big surprise, and blackberries), but, hey, sometimes we all make impulse purchases. At least this one wasn’t a $600 pair of killer metallic lavender stilettos that were 40% off…not like I’ve ever done that…

Anyway, I had no idea what to do with these strawberries, especially because, as I mentioned above, I don’t so much care for them. For some reason the word “agrodolce” (which, in Italian, means “bittersweet”) was stuck in my head all week (as were many other Italian words; this was probably because I was singing some songs by Bellini in the shower earlier in the week and then I couldn’t get them out of my head), and then at one point “agrodolce” and “strawberries” ran into each other somewhere in the grey matter inside my little dome. 

But, of course, never being content to do things the standard way, I had to pour in the contents of a few of the bottles of the awesome al-Wadi flavorings that were sitting atop my fridge. The resulting concoction was not only really tasty, but also a hell of a lot less expensive than those Alexander McQueen heels…hypothetically speaking, of course.

Middle Eastern Agrodolce Strawberries
(makes 2 cups)

1 lb strawberries
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon pomegranate molasses
¼ teaspoon rose water

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Wash and hull the strawberries. Slice the strawberries in half lengthwise and slice each half lengthwise into thirds. Put the sliced berries into a medium-sized bowl.

Mix the remaining ingredients in a small bowl. Toss the vinegar mixture with the berries and let the berries macerate at room temperature for a half hour.

Serving suggestions

• Serve as a side dish or light dessert with brunch (my favorite meal of the week)
• Serve with chocolate cake (I made molten chocolate cakes) or over vanilla ice cream – for each serving, put 1/3 cup of the strawberries and their liquid into a small saucepan and simmer over medium-low heat for 10 minutes to cook the berries and create a sauce from the liquid.