It’s a punishing time for the armchair sports fan at the moment, what with Wimbledon and the World Cup to fit in, but this is where all the training pays off. You just have to stay focused, dig deep, and keep the TV remote close to hand.

As you’ll all know, football is my main love, but Wimbledon has its compensations – cold jugs of Pimm’s and if you are lucky, a glimpse of Maria Sharapova (sorry Tim, but she’s far more my type).

And then, of course, there’s strawberries and cream. Wimbledon would not be Wimbledon without them, which leads me to this week’s recipes, all dedicated to this amazing fruit.

Local strawberries are a far cry from the tasteless imports we have to contend with for the rest of the year. At the restaurants, we’ve noticed an increase in the types of gourmet varieties available from farms in Kent: Garriguettes, Mara des Bois and the heart-shaped Pajaro to name a few.

We’re nearing the end of the season for the early summer varieties (such as the lovely Garriguettes), but I’m happy so long as we continue to get punnets of wild strawberries and Mara des Bois for a few more weeks.

Mara des Bois are a cross between regular strawberries and Fraises des Bois, resulting in a medium-sized fruit with the intensity of wild strawberries.

I absolutely love them with a little dash of aged balsamic vinegar to accentuate their flavour and a generous scoop of poppy-seed ice-cream. If you can only get hold of the regular supermarket varieties, then by all means use them for any of the following recipes.

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