FFWD Goat Cheese and Strawberry Tartine

Thank you very much to everyone for all of the well-wishes!  This is definitely a very strange time of waiting.  Since I'm on maternity leave this week with no baby (yet!), I've decided to make as many of the June FFWD dishes as I can.  Hopefully by the time this posts on Friday the baby will be here, but at this point we're definitely still at the wait and see stage...

Paul has been growing strawberries for a couple of years now.  He wasn't thrilled with the first variety he tried (they're pretty big and hearty but don't have a ton of flavor) so he ordered the variety that we used to love buying at the Santa Monica Farmer's Market.  The berries aren't as big and are more delicate, but they're redder and have a much more pronounced flavor.  The problem with growing your own strawberries is that they all seem to be ripe at once!  We love them, but it's hard to eat them quickly enough.  On Sunday there was a big container full in the fridge that were about to go bad.  I picked out 18 pretty ones for the tartines, and prepared the rest for jam.  The tartines were fun to put together--I got to use some of my French sourdough bread from my recent baking binge--but I wasn't particularly impressed by their flavor.  They tasted good, it's hard to go wrong with goat cheese and strawberries, but I definitely wasn't overwhelmed.  I know they're supposed to be served as a first course, but I very rarely serve courses when it's just the two of us.  We at them with miso salmon and sauteed swiss chard from the garden.  The chard (and the strawberry rhubarb pie that followed!) was probably the highlight of the meal.

The jam was also excellent.  Paul did most of the cooking, and it came out a perfect consistency with big pieces of berries.  Not the easiest jam to spread, but it's absolutely delicious and really allows the berries to shine.