Oxnard, CA-Toss away salty pepperoni for sweet and tart strawberry slices. Replace the pumps of gooey processed cheese for ladles of syrupy strawberries. Relax over a glass of strawberry merlot or champagne, or fight the stifling mid-May heat with a strawberry beer.
At the California Strawberry Festival, the eponymous berry is the main attraction as local growers showcase their freshest pickings and local food vendors get creative. Among the typical festival food stall fare, visitors can find strawberries in pizza, nachos, beer, wine, smoothies and chocolates.
Each year, the California Strawberry Festival organizes a two-day weekend extravaganza to raise money for community groups while celebrating Oxnard’s $230 million annual strawberry industry. Since its inception in 1984, Southern California non-profit organizations received close to $3 million dollars from the festival.
The weekend brings families, friends, neighbors and colleagues together. There is a deep sense of pride in the local agriculture as Oxnard’s strawberries end up in grocery stalls throughout the country. It is a celebration of man’s relationship with land and its natural bounties. Showcasing the versatility of strawberries and its nearly universal appeal, inventive cooks sell unlikely strawberry dishes to raise money for non-profit groups.
Strawberry Pizza
Strawberries with their lush, sweet and tart juicy body need very little gilding. However, for 25 years, Rio Mesa High School’s Athletic Booster Club has been topping their special pizzas with strawberries as a “faux pepperoni” for curious visitors.
The crust is a par-baked pastry; however, it is neither crisp nor flaky. Instead of tomato sauce, the diligent team mixes about 300 pounds of cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar to spread on top of the crust. Strawberry slices, top the pizza along with whipped cream.
Strawberries have some added sweetness and are soft and tender, though not limp or mushy. The cream cheese spread is tart with a subtle sweetness. Whipped cream thins out some of the rich and sweet flavors and lightens the dish. Most striking is the cooling effect the dish has on the whole body.
Unlike traditional pizza, the crust plays a secondary role, purely providing a solid base to the wet and juicy toppings. With the texture closer to enriched bread than flaky pastry dough, it is dense and chewy.
“We use about 90 volunteers each day, also a lot of volunteers the week prior,” says Karen Gramacki.
As Gramacki leads the energetic group that includes parents, teachers and students, a constant flow of curious people line up for a taste of strawberry pizza. Volunteers such as Mel Kaneshiro start the production by spreading sweetened cream cheese on the crust.
“It’s a great strawberry dessert because it’s different,” says Kaneshiro.
“You think of pizza and you think hot, but the berries and the cream cheese sauce are cool. I always suggest they add ice cream on top.”
“We have an assembly line,” explains Gramacki. “People putting the spread on. Others with strawberries. It is an incredible amount of work.”
“We go through probably the equivalent of 200 to 250 flats of strawberries. We slice all of those. We go through another 30 flats to top each slice with a whole berry. Everything is donated by local growers and in two days we’ll sell 4,000 slices. We end up bringing in $13,000 for Rio Mesa High School.”
It is an evocative dish-highly original to Oxnard and the Strawberry Festival. With its local berries and homemade touch, it celebrates the wonderful diversity of strawberries. Its simple rusticity has a homey comfort that evokes the sounds, sites and people of the festival.
Strawberry Nachos
A sign of a must-try dish is its head turning appeal. Among the busy foot traffic, the frequent sighting of a strawberry nacho inevitably leads to people stopping in mid-sentence mid-bite or mid-sip to watch the passing strawberry mound.
These ephemeral sightings send waves of enthusiastic people to Pacifica High School’s food stall. From young toddlers drawn by the thick red mound of strawberries to elderly couples musing about the crunchy cinnamon-sugar crackles, the crowds adore the strawberry nachos.
“Tastes good, sweet and crunchy,” musters jolly Larry Benveniste, still with a mouth full of strawberries.
According to Chris Davis, the school’s nurse, Pacifica opened eight years ago in Oxnard and started serving the nachos six years ago.
“Our original booster club president thought it up. When people hear about them they’re like ‘What?’ Once they find out about them, then they’re like ‘Ahhh!’”
Working with her daughter, who attends Pacifica High School, Davis shows off the arrangement of sandy cinnamon chips surrounding a pool of glossy red strawberry sauce. Topped with some whipped cream, it is light, sweet and crunchy.
Build Your Own Shortcake
At the “Build Your Own Shortcake” tent, visitors can pay five dollars for the rights to custom design shortcake to their liking. With no height, weight or ingredient limitations, it is a free-for-all celebrating the iconic dish.
According to legend, early colonists created the strawberry shortcake after watching Native Americans pound strawberries into their cornbread. Today strawberry shortcake is a classic combination as the light froth of whipped cream and the sweet, tart strawberries work to cut dense, buttery pound cake.
Excited lines at the tent entrance feature eager participants boasting with outstretched arms the heights they aim to achieve with their shortcake. Inside, stations of sliced and whole strawberries, pound cake and whipped cream await as instruments of creativity and gluttony.
According to festival organizers, shortcake builders go through 8,000 pounds of sliced strawberries, 275 flats of whole strawberries, 3,000 loaves of Entenmann’s pound cake and 1,500 cans of Lucerne whipped cream.
As people leave the tent, they raise their creations triumphantly to the passing crowds. Wobbling and on the verge of teetering, friends and family rush in to eat the shortcakes until structurally sound.
Strawberry Curiosity
Strawberry smoothies are common at any juice bar or blended-drink shop, but adults looking for a more sophisticated way to relax and cool off, can opt for strawberry wine, champagne and beer.
Crowd reaction to the drinks is mixed at best, but the long lines suggest curiosity and novelty is still a major draw.
“Tastes like beer with strawberry,” says Rico, one of the many beer-totters in the crowd.
“Just a faint strawberry aftertaste,” adds Priscilla, Rico’s wife. “Not too sweet, not very strong.”
The crowds seem willing to try all of the strawberry inspired foods and drinks. For the traditionalists, plenty of local growers sell flats of strawberries ready to eat plain and without adornment.
Most of the creative dishes work because they add a strawberry twist to familiar dishes. Moreover, they do not get in the way of the pineapple-like fruity flavors of the strawberry that are sweet, tart and tropical. With minimal processing, the strawberries keep their firm, but juicy flesh.
It is not the pizza or nacho element that makes the dish, but the freshness of the strawberry that transform each bite into a mouthful of luxury. By honoring the strawberry, the festival honors both the soil that delivers the berries and the growers that harvest them for all to enjoy.
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