Kirschwasser. You wouldn't get much, but if you made it right it would certainly be incredible.
You can make clafoutis without pitting them; the pits will add to the flavor. You won't need as many as for a pie: The Country Cooking of France calls for one pound.
Or, you could roast threeish medium beets, dicing them after having slipped them from their skins and letting them join the juice of a lemon in which many bruised tarragon leaves have been left to soak, all then being left to soak while you place your cherries with a little water in a covered pan over medium heat for ten minutes, during which time the fruit will exsanguinate copiously; if you then remove the cover and mash them but good with the flat of a wooden spoon, you will be able with a modicum of diligence to separate the pits, if you have not already pitted them (and if you have, you should still not omit to mash them up), from the flesh and then with a slotted spoon to remove them. If to your cherries you now add some thyme, and recover them for some minutes more, their liquid further to remove, that is meet; finally, you will want to add the lemon juice, beets, and tarragon to the whole, and let them become as one.
Jesus' suggestion is illegal, and if you don't have enough for a pie, you might have enough for a scant ounce if you're lucky.
You don't have a duck handy do you? Julia has a roast duck recipe that cries out for those kinds of cherries.
max
['And some cognac, too.']
mmmm cherries. Eat them.
It is blackberry season here. It rained early in the week. They are delicious and big.
I need to figure out how to ship them to Jesus.
You can also simply make a syrup of your cherries by pitting them and cooking them with some sugar until (duh) you have a syrup. You could put it on pancakes or waffles or Greek yogurt or what-have-you. Or, you could perform a modification of the following recipe for Pâtes de framboisesmdash;de cerises?
Taking 1.5 pounds integral cherries (raspberries in the original, obviously): first, put them in a pan, covered, and simmer for ten to twelve minutes; second, put them through a food mill, recovering the liquids and discarding the solids; second, measure out an equal volume of sugar; third, stir in a tablespoon of pectin to the liquid; fourth; cook the sugar and pectin-juice mixture in a saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly, until it has reached a temperature of 230 degrees farenheit; fifth, decant the now quite thick paste into a 7" square pan which you have previously lightly oiled and lined with parchment paper (you might want also to lightly oil the paper); sixth, having let the paste cool at least two hours, turn it out onto a sheet of parchment paper sprinkled generously with sugar, sprinkling the now-exposed underside also with sugar; seventh, cut it all into squares, sprinkling each exposed side again with: sugar.
Keeps for one month.
You could also do as max suggests and just eat them, perhaps with a little sugar or brandy.
You could also candy them!
Cherry ice cream, maybe, if you have an ice cream maker?
The Larousse reports this small-scale bit of cod-Roman excess:
Some fruit is reconstituted; for example, large crystallized strawberries can be hollowed out and filled with smaller crystallized strawberries, and stoned (pitted) apricots are filled with crystallized apricot pulp.
Or you could give them to meeeee!
Or you could make a sour cherry granita, which doesn't require an ice-cream maker.
5 gets it right; good fresh fruit, when there isn't much, is best enjoyed as-is. If you cook 'em you won't appreciate how amazing they are - at least not as much as if you eat them.
So says I. But then again, a bag of cherries _might_ last an afternoon in my hands. Probably more like an hour or two.
Sour cherries are a bit of an acquired taste as-is.
You have enough for a pie if you have about 2.5 pounds.
W-lfs-n, can you actually cook or do you just write about it?
If so, when are you making us something??
good fresh fruit, when there isn't much, is best enjoyed as-is
I particularly enjoy quinces in this fashion.
Jesus' suggestion is illegal, and if you don't have enough for a pie, you might have enough for a scant ounce if you're lucky.
I'm assuming that Becks is willing to commit a victimless crime—for which she would be unlikely to be arrested—to achieve the incredible. The tiny amount would only enhance the experience. Anyway, you can make kirschwasser without pitting the cherries, which makes the idea that much more attractive.
You'll probably want to disintregrate the cherries for the recipe in six prior to putting them in the saucepan.
15: good point. Becks, you have a still, right?
If you don't have a still, don't let that stop you! They're easily assembled from items you can find at any hardware store.
1) We have beets, too! Fresh from the farm!
2) Ben can cook. He doesn't just write about it.
Can she make a cherry pie,
Billy Boy, Billy Boy?
Can she make a cherry pie,
Charming Billy?
She can make a cherry pie,
Quick as a cat can wink an eye,
She's a young thing
And cannot leave her mother.
If not enough to make a pie, and you're not inclined to eat them as is, I'd say a cobbler. Or a crisp; though then probably apple-cherry (that's done, isn't it?)
Cobbler is pretty damn great, and so is clafoutis, and both are easy and delicious!
If I had some cherries, I think I'd be inclined to make a thick jam and use them to make sandwich cookies with punitions. (Recipe for punitions on the YBWWWE wiki.)
I was quite serious about the duck and the cherries. I've only made that once and it was good good good. It would go even better with goose.
That said, eating them fresh would be good, but what about kirschsuppe?
max
['I always wanted to make that.']
Stills are very easy to build but very difficult to hide from the authorities. In this day and age, however, I doubt the average beat cop would recognize the signs.
18 - It's the welding that's a bitch. I'm still waiting for the one I bought off ebay to arrive.
Something involving nudity and whipped cream? More to take advantage of the glowing color than the tartness.
I'll take the opportunity of this food post to plug our vegetarian cooking blog focusing on local (Boston) farmer's market produce. I don't want to hear anything from you Californians. My garden will be posted at the beginning of next week.
Oh, yeah, cold cherry soup. Mmmm.
That said, I am in the cobbler/crisp chorus.
Make a sauce and put it on vanilla ice cream.
4 cups fresh pitted cherries, puréed in a blender
1/3 cup sugar
1 lemon, halved lengthwise and sliced thin
2 cups water
1 stick, cinammon
1 cup dry red wine (I'd think more fruity might be better, or maybe just dark and elderly, but hey!)
1 cup heavy cream, whipped
In a saucepan gently simmer the cherry purée, sugar, lemon slices, water and cinnamon for 25 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from heat. Cool. Remove the cinnamon stick. Stir in the wine and chill at least four hours. Stir well. Serve topped with whipped cream. Makes six servings.
max
['That is still not the recipe I have a picture of in my head but I can't find in my books, but I think it'll do.']
My knowledge of distillation is hypothetical, of course. But Chopper, you might want to email me.
put on vanilla ice-cream
not the kind of cherries you have, we call them moil, i looked it up it is called bird cherries, the black ones, maybe you don't eat it
so the bird cherries you don't need to pit, you can smash them with their seeds until the powder state, and add to the sour cream or white butter
a 100% effective usage
it tastes like haagen datz's cherry vanilla ice-cream
but maybe not every kind of cherries' seeds can be eaten, maybe they are poisonous something
though the sour cherry seeds extract is cardioprotective in ischemia they say
the bird cherries' extract is good for dyspepsia and diarrhea
i liked cherry kompots, never made myself though
SP is female? I'd have sworn otherwise.
If I may. I'm enjoying the food blogging, though I've already confessed that baking isn't my thing. Yet SP's veggie food blog is cheering, and inspired me to look again at RFTS's food blog. And to add them to my newsreader! (I'm a little slow.)
Summer in the mid-Atlantic region sucks for those of us with Nordic blood. A perpetual slog, a move toward non-cooking, minimal use of heat-producing devices. It takes weeks of resistance on my part before I give in to the need to make marinated bean salads, with raw! red! onion! and lots of it, and grain salads, and find ways to buck up to aggressive utilization of the veggies that come from my local CSA.
Would that they were providing more these days than 2 astonishingly beautiful heads of lettuce, 2 gigantic bunches of kale, fresh garlic, scallions. Every week. Ach. Stir-frying's not really my thing.
Anyway. Raw foods. It's raspberry season here; or rather, what Matt the farmer insists to me are, in my backyard, "wildberries", not raspberries. Okay. My roommate is currently out of town, but ate all our raspberries -- I thought the deer had gotten to them -- before he left. In the week he's been gone, a new batch has ripened.
This morning I jealously picked all the newly ripe raspberries. What can I say; another round is ripening, hey. We noshed on them at the shop throughout the day. I stepped on a thorn in the morning -- these are thorny bushes -- removed it immediately and felt not much of a thing, but now am experiencing payback.
35- You've seen me at a meetup, so I don't know where you got that impression.
right off the tree
Trees. Sigh.
You might remember when I returned from my vacation this time last year, the house had gotten badly infested with fleas. This year, I return to find the top 25 feet of a tree lying in the front yard and two big-ass trees down in the back yard, including one that landed on our big wooden shed/workshop, knocking out the electricity to it and punching a couple holes through the roof. It then rained for the next four days. Oh, and the cable box died as well, so I can't even distract myself with television.
I thought I'd be spending tomorrow dealing with the washing machine that stopped working just before we left (and two weeks after replacing the dryer). But that's been pushed way down the priority list, I suppose.
I'm starting to believe God is punishing me.
Don't worry Apo. God is not punishing you. He's just punishing your stuff.
I suppose I should be happy that only small stuff fell on the house itself, and that we weren't keeping much in the shed I would miss, aside from the camping equipment that doesn't care about getting wet anyhow. But man, what a pain in the ass this is going to be.
To tell the truth, 37 is the reason I was so damn sure you were male. So now I'm suspecting I've somehow gotten two pseudonyms confused with one another in my head. I wonder who it is that I think you are?
That sucks Apo.
Wait, and you sign your emails with a very characteristically male name. Are you sure you're female?
Apo, man that sucks. You need a tarp or several, first off. Gives a little time to mull it over?
44: Brock, what are you talking about? Every time I overheard SP at UnfoggedCon2, he added brightly to his self-introduction: SP!
Cut it with apples and make a cherry-apple pie.
Wait! I just reailzed that SP in 37 is claiming to be male, not female. Whew--so much less confused now. Now that I understand, to answer the question posed by 37, the list of contributors to "your" blog you posted at 27 are all female. That's what prompted 35.
All better now.
If they were Lapins, you could cut steaks from them. They're that big.
If you're not going to just eat them outright, and want to do something that will remind you of summer when it isn't any longer, you might try cherry butter.
I have a pound of Bings in the fridge; I think I'll go get a snack.
Ah, I don't have a bio entry yet, but the last two posts are signed by me.
My cherry-apple-bourbon pie recipe is on the wiki. It uses dried cherries, but fresh would be yummy. I've only ever made it in winter.
OT: In Italy, apparently, being gay means you're not competent to drive a car.
Go and get a cherry pitter. It gives you something to do with your hands whilst listening to music and makes cherry pitting incredibly easy. Then make a cherry pie/tart/cobbler/whatever.
I miss blueberries, dammit. Real growing-on-the-bush-in-the-back-yard blueberries.
I hate SoCal plants. Hatehatehatehate. They all look like the mutant big brother of pot plants in my aunt's living room and nothing I truly love grows out here. Like violets and lily-of-the-valley and apples and lilacs.
I would miss lilacs. And apples. Is it not fragrant there?
It's very fragrant. The orange blossoms are mostly gone for the year, but my block is filled with jasmine and tuberose.
I bet that you could successfully complement not just duck or goose but also venison with cherries.
When I am king, the cumin-haters will get what's coming to them.
At the farmer's market today there was a stand selling legs of wild pig, which I briefly wanted to get before realizing that spending $70 on 9 pounds of pork, bone, and fat probably wouldn't be the wisest investment at this point in my career.
Oh, you should do it, Ben. Those things aren't a dime a dozen, I expect; no time like the present, live a little, etc. That's pretty cheap per pound, probably.
Hey Ben what did you think of Thursday's show?
sometime I forget that this blog is on mountain time.
I was somewhat disappointed with the selection of songs SGM played. Most of it seemed to be new material (which is not in itself disappointing) but I really wanted hear one or more of "The Cockroach", "Babydoctor", or "The Companions". The encore of old material was good, though, and I thought the rearrangement of "Hymn to the Morning Star" was nice.
The openers were also really good, of course.
(And how often can you say that?)
I had never heard SGM before and I wasn't as blown away as I expected to be. It kind of sounded like complexity for the sake of complexity. And it was so serious (I think, sometimes it's hard to tell these days), and so melodramatic... maybe I need to hear some of their songs more than once before I really get a feel for it.
In some ways I actually enjoyed the openers more. They were less serious, and the music was more tuneful and just all around more accessible. Maybe I'm missing something though.
Clearly Apo is not meant to go on vacation.
And I love the plants here. My god, just walking around on the sidewalk, you can smell gorgeous flowers all year round. It's amazing.
52: Not fragrant in a lilac-apple-berry sort of way. I'm allergic to jasmine and none of the myriad of roses in the front garden have any scent at all.
LA air is generally wretched, but for the few post-rain days a year. Lately, we're getting the lovely scent of newly applied tar from the construction next door. Somehow, not the same pleasures as my former Berkshire residence.
Go and get a cherry pitter.
I'll second that. We made cherry ice cream from fresh cherries a few weeks ago, and with the pitter, it was way less work than I'd have thought it would be.
And lovely blog, SP. The photo of the empty strawberry shortcake plates is totally cracking me up for some reason.
which I briefly wanted to get before realizing that spending $70 on 9 pounds of pork, bone, and fat probably wouldn't be the wisest investment at this point in my career.
7 bucks a pound isn't a bad deal but a close enough leg of pork ought to be quite a bit cheaper. Wise decision, sir!
I bet that you could successfully complement not just duck or goose but also venison with cherries.
You probably could, but I'm not sure about the mechanics. You roast the fowl, so the cherries would have plenty of time to cook and merge and all that wonderful stuff, but you can't really do the same with venison, so you'd need another approach.
max
['Have to make a sauce separate I suppose.']
68: my former Berkshire residence
Well, no wonder you're pining. I sometimes wonder whether the love I feel for New England is a happy coincidence, a congruence between my natural tendencies and where I happened to spend the first few decades of my life, or whether it's just recorded in me.
71: Max, Ben's on top of it.
i read about bird cherries stones and they say it's poisonous! never knew, must be different subspecies, from what i saw the closest is the pic of the manchurian or we used, for generations!, too small dose to get poisoned, how strange, maybe i'm already dead
for Apo
to cheer up during the clearup :)
but a close enough leg of pork
Fwiw, they really aren't close at all, if you're comparing to industrially raised pork.
By strange coincidence, I also bought a bunch of tart cherries this weekend. If you haven't already made something, try this pie recipe. You can pit the cherries pretty easily with a paper clip.
I think 30 gets it exactly right, but then my favorite dessert is vanilla ice cream with fresh raspberries.
That said, I am in the cobbler/crisp chorus.
Ahhh, that's tough to say.
By the way, I made a cherry cobbler. Just took it out of the oven and it looks amazing.
Seconding cherry clafouti. Julia Child's recipe is here. It only needs three cups of cherries, too.
If you like, you can sprinkle a little more sugar over the cherries before adding the batter, or use a combination of cherries and any nice fresh berries.
(Well, have some clafouti anyway. Raspberries, even thawed frozen ones, are also awesome in this.)
Apropos to the raspberry talk, I made this tonight. Served with a balsamic vinaigrette. It was delicious.
I have the most beautifully colored syrup in the world downstairs. Plums are sitting in it.
Those are remarkably regular and even supremes, Stanley. You must have a very sure hand with a knife.
ben, you're just jealous because you didn't go on a lovely hike with a lovely companion, only to return to a lovely dinner of pasta, red wine, and salad.
Your mother fucks dogs in hell, Stanley.
68: Ah, well, roses without scent are an abomination. I don't blame you for disliking them.
The suggestion in 6—come to life!