I’m a sucker (or should I say pucker?) for sour cherries. Fresh ones are nearly impossible to find, and the season is a brief blink in July. So when I found some at the farmers market – a small box,stuck in a corner, nearly hidden by towering mounds of boring Bings – I pounced.
These are Montmorency cherries, a breed that’s over 100 years old, and the most plentiful type of cherry in North America.
They’re a beautiful, bright crimson – so pretty, I almost don’t mind the tedious task of pitting each one. I remember pitting cherries when I was a kid, using one of my grandmother’s old-fashioned u-shaped hairpins to fish-out the seed. Now I’m thoroughly modern and use a paperclip.
I didn’t make a cherry custard pie, like I remember adoring when I was young (anybody got a recipe?). Instead, I went for the sugar-cookie crust cobbler, from The Best Recipe cookbook – my go-to cobbler recipe. The crisp, sweet, buttery crust is the perfect foil for sour cherries. The Bottomless Pit thoroughly approved!
La Tartine Gourmande is another sour cherry fan. She has some sexy cherry shots and an intriguing cherry soup recipe here. Dommage! I’ve got no cherries left to experiment.
So what to do in those dreary months when you can’t get fresh cherries? One of my favorite risky-things-that-might-break-in-your-suitcase is Confipote cherry jam, from France. You can find it in just about any supermarket (in French, “cherry” is “cerise”). It’s a low-sugar jam, so the zing of the cherries comes through brilliantly. (Yes, I know this photo is a jar of fig jam, but obviously, I already ATE the cherry jam!)
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Lowell Thomas Award-winner Gayle Keck has sipped fermented mare’s milk in Kyrgyzstan, dug for truffles in Italy, crafted wine at Napa Valley’s “Crush Camp” and munched her way through every continent except Antarctica, which seems far too focused on frozen food.
She has written for Gourmet, National Geographic Traveler, Zagat San Francisco Bay Area Restaurants 2010, and is a frequent contributor to the Washington Post and other major newspapers.
Gayle has visited 49 US states (sorry, North Dakota) and more than 40 countries – though her favorite trip was a flight from Chicago to San Francisco, when she met her future husband on the airplane. She also blogs at Been There Ate That
