A Fool for Sour Cherries

“Tragic,” my fellow-cook Anne said.

Tragic to us is what I did the other day.  I drove to Little Compton for a visit, going from one friend to another. On the way, I stopped at the Fruit Lady’s, and to my surprise, she still had sour cherries: living nearly an hour away on the other side of the bay, and being very busy in June and early July, I have missed them this year. So I was thrilled to see them.

There was only one pint, though, which I bought along with three colors of currants, and asked if there would be more later in the day: they put the fruit out twice a day.  The Fruit Lady makes no promises, but after stopping at Walkers on the way out for corn (gone—went to Karla for that and some fresh garlic) and lettuce and real cream (success), I stopped at the Fruit Lady’s on the way out and there, on the stand, were two pints!  Waiting for ME! I snatched them up, together with a cup of raspberries (I’d bought the currants and raspberries in the morning), and went to pay. Fruit Lady husband/farmer, Dick, was there, and though we’d spoken at length in the morning, we struck up a conversation again. I talked while rummaging around for more cash and bagging up my purchases, eager to get on the road back through Newport before the traffic got really bad. I hit the road, happy.

At home, I unloaded my treasures of lettuce, cream, milk, corn, garlic, some discounted perennials, currants, raspberries, and….cherries? Where are the rest of my cherries??

Left. Lost. A fool. Ergo: Tragic.

But I did have my one pint. Not enough for a pie, but still. What to make? A batch of cocktail cherries? Some little turnovers? Some of my favorite jam? I decided—it seemed fitting—on a fool. I had that wonderful cream, after all, and I could do a semblance of a cherry pie filling for the fruit.

It was trash day, and while the filling was doing its quick cooking on the stove, I did my usual survey of the refrigerator and freezer to see what, if anything, needed to go.  And there, lying right at the top of the freezer drawer, tightly wrapped, was something I’d forgotten about: a single layer of Mrs. Lincoln’s sponge cake . So maybe I’m just a trifle of a fool, after all.

Sour Cherry Fool or Trifle

You can make a close facsimile of a fool with just the cherries and cream, or turn it into a close relative of a trifle with the added cake.  A fool is usually made with fresh fruit, and a trifle with custard, but these are close enough. The trifle is surprisingly light and refreshing—a nice summer dessert.  This would be good with blueberries treated similarly.

2 c sour cherries, pitted

½ cup sugar

juice of ¼ lemon

1/8 tea cardamom

dash cinnamon

dash salt

1 ½ T corn starch

 

1 cup fresh, high-fat heavy cream

2 T + 2 tea sugar

½ tea vanilla

1 thin layer homemade sponge cake, or 1 pkg lady fingers

¼-1/3 cup white wine

2 T rhubarb or other fresh red-fruit syrup (optional)

For the cherries:

Place the cherries, sugar, lemon juice, spices, salt, and cornstarch into a heavy aluminum 2-qt saucepan.  Turn the heat on low, and after the sugar has begun to melt and the cherries to throw off liquid, turn the heat to medium-high and cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened. This will take no more than 5 minutes; do not overcook. Cool to room temperature.

For the whipped cream:

Beat the cream with the sugar and vanilla until it forms soft (not stiff) peaks.

To assemble:

 

In a pretty bowl, preferably glass, make layers, beginning and ending with the cherries, as follows:

1. Tear about a third of the sponge into pieces and fit them around the dish fairly snugly. Sprinkle with a little of the syrup and the wine.

2. Spread a layer of whipped cream to cover (a little less than 1/3).

3. Spread about 1/3 of the cherry mixture over the cream, not quite to the edges. 

4. Repeat. You should have a little whipped cream left over for garnish if desired.  Layers will not be as visible as in a trifle made with firm custard, but will be nice when scooped out. Cover and chill for  3-6 hrs.   

Remove from the refrigerator about 10-15 minutes before serving (you do know how I object to anything too cold to taste). Serve in glass or white bowls if you have them, with a little extra whipped cream. Garnish with a little grated lemon zest, or with a little mint, if desired.

 

Slowly, Sour Cherries

Everything, not just the corn, is a little behind this year. In some ways, that’s been good. The lettuce, always sensational early summer but usually starting to lose its cool-weather cool by early July, is having an amazing run. We’re talking perfect heads of Boston lettuce 15” in diameter. Now that’s what I call salad days.

Many of the berries are not faring so well. The fruit lady is having a bad season so far. She lost all her blackberry plants—total death—in the winter storms. One of the spring storms—the wind, mostly—flattened her raspberries and the crop has been sparse (although when she’s managed to pick some, they’ve been good). She is hopeful about the blueberries: they are not ready yet, but she tastes them as they grow and she thinks they are going to be good. The Montmorency cherries are not ready either—those prized and fleeting gems I wait for each year, sometimes picking my own at the fruit lady’s farm so as not to miss them—but some of the newer varieties, like the Balatons, are coming in. While I consider them on a par with, say, skim milk compared to whole, they will do in a pinch.

So I got some cherries from Young Farm last week because I was charged with bringing dessert to a friend’s house for dinner, and I wanted to bring a pie. When I started making it, I could see they were a little under-ripe, and they tasted a little “pale”—the best way to describe a cherry that has had too much rain and isn’t, well, a Montmorency. 

So the pie looks well enough, right? Well, as I said to my friends when I carried it in and everyone started exclaiming, “is that a sour cherry pie?!” : don’t get too excited. I knew it wasn’t going to be great, as in, well, Montmorency great.  So I made the crust extra-good (by that, I mean I did a high butter/lard to flour ratio). And I made a back-up dessert. I had some blueberries from New Jersey—and I can tell you, New Jersey blueberries are a very good substitute when local ones are not in—and had bought some currants from the fruit lady, which were nice. I made a little blueberry and currant crisp, and brought some of the great local heavy cream for that, and some of Gray’s vanilla ice cream for the pie. Cream is a cook's cure-all.

 

Both were fine, and as expected. I await the call from the fruit lady’s husband, telling me the Montmorencies from their 80+ year old tree are in.  And then, we’ll have my idea of a pie.

  

Sour Cherry Pie

The recipe is here, in a 2007 post. If your cherries are not perfectly ripe, you can do what I did: up your fat to flour ratio; add a little more lemon and a little maple syrup (compensating for the added liquid with a bit more cornstarch); add some spice, such as cardamom, which I generally prefer not to put in cherry pie when cherries are great because I like it pure. 

Past Prime: Versatile Syrups

When all the fruit is coming in like runners in the Olympic torch-bearing relay, it is hard to keep up with the hand-offs.  No matter how much time you spend in your too-hot, too-humid summer kitchen (not, as we know, the ideal weather for jam and jelly making), you are bound to be left with miscellaneous bits of fruit that is no longer—perhaps never was—quite perfect.  In my waste-not, want-not world, which I believe is the world of all true and natural cooks, it’s not possible to throw it out. It is not merely frugality that leads us to resist, although that is part of it. It is challenge:  what can I do with this? If cooking is transformation, what can I make of this? What can I turn it into? The humblest transformations are, in the end, a combination of austerity and creativity.

As Anthony Bourdain pointed out in his Les Halles Cookbook, the French were masters of turning questionable ingredients and odds and ends into good things to eat. From cutting meat creatively to cooking tough pieces for a very long time with flavorful aromatics, they not only made do with what they had, they made things that have become soul-satisfying classics.  One thing you might notice about this, though, is that there was, at the same time, a recognition that you don’t slave and fuss over these less-than-stellar ingredients, or try to make something of them that no amount of attention is going to produce.  If nothing else, a good cook is pragmatic, and knows you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. But you can make a very good braised sow’s ear.

It’s the same with fruit past its prime. No pies, no plump preserves or clear jellies, no decorating cakes and tortes, certainly no eating out of hand. But they do make very good syrups and sauces, flavored iced teas and shrubs—anything where the flavor is extracted (usually through heat) and the less-than-perfect fruit strained out, and where you don’t need much if any pectin, which is lost as fruit becomes old or overripe.

I really like to have syrups on hand (two of my favorites are rosehip and rosemary) —and not just for cocktails, although of course they are great for that.  Syrups have many endearing qualities. They last forever. They can be used as an ingredient—in drinks, salad dressings, sauces, frostings and glazes—or as an embellishment—drizzled over cheese, fresh fruit, grilled meats. You can utilize other marginal items in making them—shriveling herbs, fading whole spices, a single slice of lemon or squeezed peels.  They make you feel virtuous because, of course, you did not throw anything out.

Fruit Syrups

You can use any combination that you have, or fancy. For one of these, I used about half blueberries and half sour cherries (for this purpose, you needn’t bother to pit your fruit); I had some leftover, drying mint. This made a deeply flavorful and refreshing syrup. For another, I used Karla’s imperfect peaches—half the price of her perfect ones—slightly bruised and overripe, but still juicy and flavorful and not too far gone. My friend Trina loves bellinis, so I made the peach syrup with her in mind, and with the inspiration of Katie Loeb. A Bellini made with this is much better than, well, a Bellini.

Measure your fruit. Put it in an aluminum or other nonreactive pan with an equal amount of sugar and an equal amount of water.  If you have a small wedge of lemon or orange, squeeze it and then drop it in. Bring to a boil and cook at a moderate bubble for 5 minutes or so, until your fruit has softened, popped, or otherwise begun to break down and release their color and juice. It is not necessary to skim. Remove from the heat. Toss in your herbs and/or spices, stir, and cover. Let steep until cool, or until it is as intense as you like (taste it from time to time). Strain through a fine strainer or cheesecloth into jars; you have my permission to press gently, enough to encourage the fruit to drain, not so much that you force it through as a puree. Cool completely and store in the refrigerator or freezer. Reboil briefly before using after three months or so if you keep it refrigerated rather than frozen.

Sour Cherry Season

The sour cherries, like everything else, were early this year. They were good, but I thought they were just a tad dry. Interesting, because it was a rainy June. But the weather freshened a few weeks before they came in, and they don’t seem the worse for the rain in the sense that they were not, as they were last year, waterlogged, and neither were they rotted and spotted, as they can also get from the rain. So, good on balance, considering the reverse-spring of 2012, warm and sunny early, wet and cool late.

I did make a pie, as you see, using the old New England standby of throwing some fruit in a rolled-out pastry and pouring over some sour cream and sugar.  This is the first time I’d made this pie with cherries, and I confess that I wasn’t a huge fan. I mean, it was fine. But I like it better with something like blackberries or apples.  In fact, apple-sour cream pie is an old favorite. I first had it when I was in college at the Red Rooster Tavern in North Kingstown, Rhode Island. At the time it was a very good restaurant, run by the locally famous Normand Leclair, that served traditional but slightly sophisticated (for the time) New England food like roast pork, fresh local seafood, and pie.  I used to go there just to have that pie, which was topped with a streusel (optional, but really good). That restaurant is gone, replaced, I think, by a bar.  But I have fond memories of the place, where my parents would take me when they came to visit.

I can be a creature of habit (aren't we all?), and making this sour cream pie with cherries was, in part, a feeling that I should do something different than the usual cherry pie with lattice crust. Perhaps I will do something different again next season, but an argument can be made that, when you only have one or two shots--the brief few weeks to get those true, old Montmerencies--you should stick with what you love best. Of course, cherries are great in cakes and preserves. But when it comes to pies, classics are classic for a reason.

Sour Cherry-Sour Cream Pie

Pastry for a 9” pie (butter/lard or all butter)

1 qt sour cherries, blackberries, apples, or other fruit

1 tea lemon juice

1 c sour cream

½ c brown or white sugar

½ tea vanilla

1 T flour

1 egg

Line pie plate with pastry and chill. Mix cream, sugar, vanilla, and flour. Stir in lightly beaten egg and set aside.  Pit cherries and toss with lemon juice. Use a slotted spoon to lift the cherries into the pie plate.

Pour the sour cream mixture over. Bake at 425F for 10 min; reduce to 325 and bake 30-40 min more til juicy and bubbling. 

You can top  this pie with a traditional crumb mixture if you want; sprinkle it over after you reduce the heat.

That Sour Cherry Season

     
The sour cherries are gone now—for the second time. It was an odd cherry season, puzzling everyone, including the farmers. You’ve heard me talk about how fleeting a gift  sour cherries are, coming in right around the 4^th of July for perhaps two weeks, then over until the next year. This year, the cherries, like everything else, were late. They had suffered from the heavy spring rain, and the birds. The bird problem was compounded this year by the tough winter, which had two disastrous effects on the cherries: farmers didn’t bother to net the trees because they didn’t expect much, and the birds were ravenous.
So at conventional-wisdom cherry time, the cherries were sparse and water-laden. Working with the farmer to pick from my favorite old Montmorency tree, he instructed me to pull them off with stems intact—not the normal procedure—so that they wouldn’t absorb yet more water through where the stem had been when they were washed. The cherries had been left on the tree too long—again, the assumption that they were not as good as usual and that, after the winter, they were not ready—but they turned out to be overripe as well as waterlogged from the rain. Down the road at Young Farm, they got only a few boxes off five trees.
Then something strange happened. The weather got nice—dryer, sunnier—and the cherries came back. A second (or maybe just the “real”) crop. These were primarily from the newer and infinitely less desirable hybrid trees, but still: fruit with some of the characteristics of the old sour cherries. For the first time that I can ever recall, there were sour cherries of any kind well past the middle of July.
Naturally the first priority of the season is to make a pie. My first one, made with those waterlogged cherries, was pretty enough, but not so good, at least by the standards of someone in the know. I always make some sort of preserve, perhaps the most special kind you can make (homemade strawberry being a close second as irreplicable on a commercial scale). This year, when I am flying rather than driving back to my academic-year home and am traveling light, I decided to make something versatile that could be used up by the time I left. No problem.
Cherry-Cherry Preserves
This should be cooked a little thicker than usual (my usual, at least, which is fluid) so you can use it as a garnish for cheese, meats, or sandwiches. Makes 3-4pints.
3 c pitted sour cherries
1 heaping cup supersweet yellow cherry tomatoes
2 ½ c sugar
½ c brown sugar
2 tea lemon juice
1 tea vanilla
¼ tea Aleppo pepper or red pepper flakes
Pinch salt
Blanch the cherry tomatoes in boiling water for 30 seconds; slip the skins off with your fingers or remove them with a sharp knife.
Put the cherry tomatoes, cherries, sugars, and lemon juice in a 3 qt pot and bring to a boil. Cook, skimming the white foam, until it sheets from the spoon. Add the vanilla, pepper, and salt. Cook for a minute or two longer, and remove from the heat. It should be clear. Divide among sterilized jars and cover with lids and loosely fitted rings. When cool, tighten the rings and store in the refrigerator or freezer. Bring to room temperature before serving.

    

Pickin’ Time I: Sour Cherries

 

           

I got a call around 8:00 on the Fourth of July. It was Dick Hart, the fruit lady’s husband, asking if I wanted to come pick cherries. In my sour-cherry-obsessed world, this is what is known as a rhetorical question (of course I want to pick!). He told me that he and his wife had picked about 8 quarts the night before, pitted, and frozen them. Best to get them before the birds carried them all away (he hadn’t put up a net this year). Why didn’t I come over around 9:30? Whatever you say.

An already perfect Fourth had become more perfect still. Arriving at the farm, we had the usual discussion on the treacherous subject of how much I wanted. I had learned well that underbidding was safest. A quart was expected, three would be seen as pushy. Would two quarts be all right? As it turned out, yes and then some. While dropping my pickings into my can on a string, Dick brought me some quart baskets, and encouraged me to pile them high. I ended up with about 5 pounds, or two and half quarts, plus an overflowing cup of currants, for $13.00.

An embarrassment of riches is its own kind of quandary. What to make? It was hot, hot, hot, not the best day for preserving, but I would have to be a fool not to make my favorite sour cherry preserves, which sustain me through the winter with not only memories of summer in Little Compton but also a taste pleasure, spooned over good vanilla ice cream, that is a kind of happiness. They took forever to gel in that relentless humidity, but they eventually did, and they are wonderful. I also decided to make the other sour-cherry preserve that I really like to have on hand, some pickled sweet-sour cherries; they are marinating away as we speak, the vinegar having been poured off and bottled. I had been fortunate enough to have  had a goodly share of cherry pie, thanks primarily to Anne, over several days, so thought I’d do something different. I settled on a sour cherry upside-down cake, a kind of experiment. It came out pretty well.

That about did it for my pickings. But when I was leaving the Hart Farm that day, Mr. Hart suggested that there might be more—that they would see how they went after he and his wife and some other unnamed person got some, and that we might divide up what remained. When the call comes, I’ll be ready.

 

Sour Cherry Upside-Down Cake

Upside-down cake is best served while it is still warm from the oven. It can be reheated briefly in the microwave if there is any left over. You can, of course, make this with almost any other fruit. Serves 9 (squares) or 8 (wedges).

For the caramel layer

3 T unsalted butter
¾ cup firmly packed light brown sugar
¼ tea cardamom

Generous pint of pitted sour cherries

For the cake

4 T unsalted butter
4 T lard
¾ cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tea vanilla
1 ½ cups a-p flour
1 ½ tea baking powder
¼ tea salt
½ cup buttermilk

Heavy cream or ice cream for serving

 

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Lightly spray an 8” square or 9” cake pan with Pam. Place the 3 T butter, the brown sugar, and the cardamom in the pan on the stove. Melt, stirring together, until the mixture just bubbles. Remove from the heat. While it cools, make the cake batter.

Cream the butter, lard, and sugar; beat in the eggs and vanilla with a wooden spoon. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt, and add to the creamed mixture alternately with the buttermilk, beginning and ending with the flour mixture and stirring until just combined.

Arrange the cherries, pitted side up (good side down) very close together on the caramel (it may be firm—that is OK). If you use a square pan, arrange them all around the outside edges, then work your way into the center in smaller squares; if you use a round pan, arrange them in concentric circles.

Scrape the batter over the cherries, smoothing it gently and evenly into the corners and along the surface. Bake for about 45 minutes. It will be golden brown; the sides will begin to pull away from the pan; and the center will spring back to your touch. Remove and cool on a rack for 15-20 minutes.

Cover the pan with a platter or plate larger than pan and, grasping both firmly with potholders or a towel, turn over quickly and confidently. Serve immediately with good, unhomogenized heavy cream poured over, or with vanilla ice cream.

 

      

The Sublime Sour Cherry

     
I am not a shrinking violet, as my obsession with sour cherries affirmed this year. As all cherry aficionados know, there are only a few weeks of the year when sour cherries appear at the roadside—in my case, at the fruit lady’s stand. It’s truly a window, somewhere between the end of June and mid July. One watches like a hawk, ready to pounce, for their first showing.
Except that this season they never appeared. The raspberries were there, and they were very good. But the cherries, which should have sat alongside them, were nowhere in sight. There was no reason to believe that something had happened to them—the weather was fine, the other fruit was perfect. Time to take matters into one’s own hands. This, I knew, was not for the faint of heart: the fruit-lady couple were downright peculiar about their fruit. They couldn’t quite make up their minds whether they sold it, or it was a gift, making it darn hard for those of us who just want to buy the stuff. I was once being chastised by his wife for picking up too many blueberries at one time.
I knew that if you stopped at the fruit lady’s stand at the right time of day—say around 11 o’clock—you might catch her husband, the farmer, hanging around. Literally: just sitting near an old camper trailer that they use as an outdoor fruit sorting venue, probably making sure you didn't take too much. I chose my time well, and paid him a visit. After engaging in a little local banter, I ventured, “No cherries this year?” Yes, there were cherries: just hadn’t picked them.
I turned this over in my mind for a moment, and decided it would have been a tactical error to ask why. I went for a neutral but interested, “Really?” and waited. “Why, you want some?” (Of course I want some!) “Yes,” I said. And then came the dreaded question, “How much?” “I’ll take as much as you have,” I said, trying not to sound greedy, more like I would be doing him a favor. He seemed to consider this. “A couple of quarts would be nice,” I amended. “You can pick some if you want,” he said. “Would your wife mind?” I asked, knowing her to be rather prickly—like raspberries, so not necessarily a bad thing, just a fact. He didn’t answer. He just handed me a coffee can on a string, which I put over my head; he put one on himself and headed behind the house. I followed.
He took me to a cherry tree covered with netting to keep the birds away, and lifted it to let me under. It felt a little sinful, like we were cheating on his wife: the tree was laden with perfectly ripe red fruit. We began to pick, surprisingly companionably, and it came out that the popularity of the raspberries led to neglect of cherry picking. And that this particular tree had been planted by his grandfather in the 1930s, when the state of Rhode Island had a program in which they gave away cherry trees to promote their cultivation in the state. “Used to be everyone around here had at least one cherry tree,” he said, “but now we’ve got some of the only ones.”
We dumped our pickings from that 70-year-old tree into three quart containers. He wouldn’t take more than $8.00 for them; after all, he pointed out, I’d done most of the picking. I gave a quart to my friend Anne, and made a small amount of preserves with another. With the last quart, I made the following vinegar and sweet-sour pickled cherries. The cherries have many uses, both sweet and savory. They are wonderful in drinks like the cocktail below.
Sour Cherry Vinegar and Sweet-Sour Pickled Cherries  
You get two for one with this old method of treating cherries; without the vinegar, it is very similar to the way maraschino cherries are made. You can double it or triple it, if you are so lucky to have all those cherries. Sour cherry season is over, but I waited to post this until my cherries were “done” so I could show you a picture of the finished product.   
1 qt perfect sour cherries
1 qt white or cider vinegar
3 cups sugar
Pit the cherries over a 3-qt glazed ceramic or glass bowl to catch the juice, tossing the cherries in as you go. Pour the vinegar over to cover. Cover with plastic or a towel and let sit on the counter for a good 24 hours. Strain off the vinegar, now a beautiful translucent red color, and bottle it. Use it in salads and sauces for duck, chicken, or meat. You can also drink it, sweetened, over ice; this is called a “shrub.”
Put the cherries back into the large bowl or a crock, layering it with the sugar. Cover and set aside in a cool place or, if it is hot and humid, in the warmest part of the refrigerator. Stir it every day for about 10 days—at least a week—then put into jars. Refrigerate or freeze these excellent cherries, which are as good over ice cream as they are as an accompaniment to meat or fish. Or use them instead of commercial maraschino cherries in whiskey sours and other cocktails for a nice surprise.
Sour Cherry Champagne Cocktail
Today is my birthday, and last night at my sister’s we made these delicious cocktails. The reputedly vegetarian dog stole three pounds of sirloin tips from the grill when we weren’t looking, leaving the hamburgers and hot dogs for us; fortunately, my sister also had a few pork tenderloins in the refrigerator. Grilled meat, champagne, and a lovely summer evening: it was a very nice birthday meal.
For each cocktail:
3 pickled sour cherries
2-3 teaspoons pickling syrup from the cherries, to taste
Brut champagne
Place the cherries and the syrup in the bottom of the glass, and fill with chilled champagne.

Heavenly Heavy Cream

Whether by coincidence or subconscience, I have always lived in a dairy farming region. And while actually living within a few miles of a dairy farm or true dairy store has not actually been a criterion (like, for example, living close to a good bakery has always been), I’ve somehow managed to do that with great continuity and serendipity. The upshot: great heavy cream, the stuff grandmothers bemoan the loss of and chefs source from distant purveyors, has always been mine for the asking. I am happily spoiled.
Heavy cream is the higher-fat layer that separates from milk when (in commercial production) spun in a centrifuge, or that (naturally) rises and is skimmed from the top of unhomogenized milk—hence another name, “top cream.” Heavy cream is sometimes also called “whipping cream” because it can be beaten to double its volume, but in recent decades a distinct “whipping cream” product has appeared in the market that is lower in fat (30-36%) than true heavy cream. In this country, the heavy cream you buy in the market is usually 36% butterfat. Creams available from dairies may be 38-40% butterfat or more, and these few percentage points make a remarkable difference. Also, much store-bought cream is ultra-pasteurized for longevity, while the cream from a local dairy is minimally pasteurized or, if you can get someone to sell it, raw. Raw or minimally pasteurized cream, and cream with a high milkfat content, will whip (and taste) the best.
Cream is a dream for cooking and baking, whether the centerpiece ingredient (ice cream), the garnish (whipped cream), the emulsifier (sauces), the finisher (soups), the fat-liquid combo (scones), or the enricher (drinks, starting with coffee, but let’s not forget the divine peppermint patty of my youth). You should consider heavy cream a staple, and always keep a container on hand for the emergency what’s-for-dinner meal of pasta in reduced cream sauce with a little nutmeg and parm, for rescuing a broken sauce, for transforming a salad dressing, for pouring over oatmeal, berries, pie, or coffee cake. The wondrous cream from local dairies will not keep beyond a week or so, but that’s OK. You will find you use it if you have it. And if after a few days it is as thick as sour cream, it will liquefy when warmed or can be used like clotted cream. If it has indeed soured, then use it as you would any other sour cream. Far better to follow its short natural life than to have a container of supermarket ultra-pasteurized cream, the stabilized keeping qualities of which are downright scary, in your fridge for three months.
Here in Little Compton, we are truly blessed to have access to the heavy cream from Arruda’s Dairy Farm. Arruda’s was established in 1917, and is still owned and operated by one of the founder’s children, Jean, and her husband, Antone Moniz (Sr.). In 2006, the Department of Environmental Management awarded them their Outstanding Dairy Farm of the Year award—no surprise there—citing their hormone free, farm-produced and farm-pasteurized milk. Their whole milk is beloved by milk lovers and cake bakers for its 4.5% fat content, about 1% above store milk; it is carried by many area stores. The heavy cream is more of a best-kept secret, however, and not necessarily available where other Arruda products are sold. This cream, with a fat content well into the mid-40% range, is as close to the famous “double cream” of U.K. dairies as one can get. It plops touchingly when you pour it—see the photo to the right and also here in a recipe for pasta with the currently available local snap peas. I am devoted to it.
Light and Lightning Whipped Cream Cake
This is the fastest cake I make, and I call it light because, even though it contains a cup of heavy cream, there is no butter in it; the cream provides all the necessary fat as well as the liquid. It is a good plain and tender cake, similar to a pound cake but with a looser crumb, for serving with berries, or toasting and buttering for breakfast or an afternoon snack. Makes 1 loaf.

1 cup heavy cream, the highest-fat you can find
2 large brown eggs
1 tea 100% vanilla extract
1 ½ cups flour
1 cup sugar
½ tea salt
2 tea baking powder
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Butter and sugar a standard (8.5x4.5x2.5) bread pan. Sift the dry ingredients together and set aside. In a small bowl beat the eggs until well combined, and set aside.
In a standing mixer fitted with the whisk, whip the cream until it forms a firm peak on the lifted beater, being careful not to overbeat. With the motor running at medium speed, add the beaten eggs and vanilla to the cream; stop as soon as combined.
Change the mixer attachment to the paddle. On low speed, gradually add the sifted dry ingredients; again, stop as soon as combined. The batter will be thick. (If you don’t have a standing mixer, after beating the cream and eggs with either an egg beater or handheld electric mixer, fold the dry ingredients in with a rubber spatula.)
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and shake it back and forth on the counter a bit to distribute and smooth the top. Bake about 55 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Let stand at least 10 minutes before turning out. In the photo, the cake is served with last year’s sour cherries, preserved in a light spiced syrup, removed from inventory (the new cherries should be here any day). This was my son’s birthday cake today, after his requests of a salad with breaded goat cheese and a homemade pizza.

Sour Cherries and Currants: Glowing, Glowing, Gone

They are the precious jewels of summer. Sparkling, transparent, rare and ruby-red, they’re the gemstones of July: sour cherries and red currants. They literally glow from the side of the road—there’s no mistaking them for raspberries, even from a distance—and then they’re gone. One week, two weeks, three if it’s a very good year.

They’re scarce as well as short-seasoned, too, making them all the more prized. Only a few varieties of sour cherry are generally grown in the United States today, principally Montmorency, in contrast to scores of cultivars only 50 or 60 years ago. Both sour cherries and red currants are highly perishable, sometimes sticky-oily to the touch, moisture-laden, and medium-soft (in contrast to the firm eating cherry), and while currants sometimes appear in conventional markets here (a fortune for a tiny ¼ cup, mere tablespoons), sour cherries never do. The commercial crop of sour cherries, grown primarily in Michigan, is raised for processing, packed in water or syrup. Pity, because a canned sour cherry is a faint sister to a fresh—and has added food coloring, as well. This leaves us searching, waiting by the side of the road, where a few farmers or local residents, most with old trees, pick them and sometimes share them with us, supplicants for a quart for cherry pie. And search you must, and make your needs known: believing there’s no demand for them, some country people with old trees don’t even bother to tend or pick them anymore. (Haying seems to coincide with the appearance of the cherries, I’ve noticed; if you see mowing and bailing going on, it’s time to look for cherries). Currants too are sometimes left unpicked because, well, they’re a pain to clean —all twiggy and tangly—and bunches and bunches yield only miniscule amounts (hence the price when you do find them in a market). They also have tiny seeds which, somewhere along the way, Someone decided that people don’t like, aiding their disappearance from the market despite their being a hardy and relatively easy crop to grow. I once was so desperate for currants that I told an elderly couple whom I knew had some among their other berries that I would just buy the branches, and clean them myself, which I did.

One consequence of this scarcity is that many people don’t even know what these fresh fruits are anymore, they’ve been absent from standard use for so long (Yet they’re both all over Europe! The first time I went to Paris, in the ‘70s, I was amazed to see the glowing little boxes of currants and cherries lined up like infantry along rue Moffetard). The other day, when picking up sour cherries and currants, which sat neglected alongside the raspberries everyone else was buying (thank goodness), a woman of around 70 said to me as I picked them up, “And what are those?” This is pretty surprising, especially for sour cherries, because they are in fact the fruit that defines our notions of the color and the taste of “cherry.” Think about it: a nearly black bing cherry is not the taste of “cherry” as in cherry cough drops or cherry cola, or the color of cherry lipstick, is it? Sour cherries are where all cherry-flavored and colored things, all things cerise, come from. One look, and taste, tells all. Currants too come in red and black, and likewise have different tastes and textures (pink or white currants, also very pretty and still scarcer, are similar to red). Red currants have a bright, snappy-tart, sweet-acid taste.

Both sour cherries and red currants make quintessential summer pies and preserves, primarily for their unique vibrant tastes that shout “Fruit!” and their made-in-heaven match with a good flaky crust. Red currants have the additional benefit of being high in pectin, making it a classic for jelly (which also deals with “the problem” of the seeds); preserves made with sour cherries will need an acid such as lemon or need to be combined with a higher-pectin fruit.

Here is a straightforward recipe for a cherry pie; a currant meringue pie or summer pudding; and sour cherry-currant preserves, the best of both worlds. As for freezing either sour cherries or currants, even in syrup? The texture and color changes render them inferior for pie or other relatively unadorned uses, such as a topping for ice cream. But frozen cherries in a light syrup are serviceable for cooked sauces, smoothies, and the like—should you be so lucky to find enough to freeze. In any case, you’re better off making jam and freezing that; it actually improves with storage.

To pit sour cherries: Using the nail of your thumb (my preferred tool) or the looped end of a small trussing skewer (don’t even think about buying a “cherry pitter”), pry the pit from the stem end; also pull away any bruised areas. Do this over a bowl to catch the juice.

Sour Cherry Pie

They’re not called “pie cherries” for nothing: here you find their true calling. Most sour cherry pie recipes call for almond extract, which, even when it is pure and natural, I don’t particularly like. I use best-quality 100% vanilla extract, a soul-mate with cherries. Many recipes also call for tapioca, which I reject. Like blueberry pie, you don’t want this too gummy or too gelatinous, but getting the perfect balance between fluid and gel is tricky. With experimentation, I’ve settled on a combination of flour and cornstarch for thickener. The fruit itself is a big factor, so don’t despair if your pie is a little runnier than you like; far better than stiff and rubbery. Serves 6.

Crust

2 cups flour
¾ tea salt
6 T cold unsalted butter
4 T lard or shortening
5-6 T ice water

In a food processor, pulse flour and salt. Drop in cold butter, and pulse a few times until pea-sized; drop in lard, and pulse again a few times until mixture is coarse and crumbly, with a few larger pieces of fat still visible. Through the feed tube, add 3 T ice water all at once with the motor running, then add remaining water, a tablespoon at a time, pulsing only until the dough comes together into a ball. Remove, divide and shape gently into two discs, and refrigerate while you make the filling, or overnight.

Filling

5-6 cups fresh sour cherries, pitted
scant 1 ¼ c sugar
1 T lemon juice
1 tea vanilla
2 T flour
2 T cornstarch
2 T unsalted butter

Heat oven to 400 F. Gently mix the pitted cherries, sugar, lemon juice, vanilla, and flour and cornstarch in a large bowl. It will make a lot of juicy liquid, even with the starch. Remove pastry and roll out to about 12-13”; fit one loosely into a 9” pie plate, and cut the other into ½” strips with a pastry wheel or sharp knife (you can use a ruler, but don’t bother unless you are entering a contest). Pour the filling into the pie plate and dot with the 2 T butter. Working from the center, weave the strips into a lattice; I lay all the “vertical” strips, starting with the center one, then weave outward in two directions from the center of the pie. Trim the overhang of both pastry layers to within an inch of the plate rim; tuck them under (to sit on top of the rim), and crimp. Chill the unbaked pie about 10 minutes, then bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 375 and bake another 30-40 minutes, until crust is golden and the juices boil up and begin to gel. Let cool completely before cutting or you will have a river of juice!! Vanilla ice cream is nice.

Currant Pie

As in the photos, you can also bake this in small blind-baked tartlet shells or in ramekins, and serve it as an old-fashioned summer pudding. This makes an 8” pie; you can use the above crust, dividing it accordingly and freezing the rest for a larger pie. Making this with all currants is equally fabulous, but because 3 cups of currants are not always that easy to find, I often combine them with raspberries, and that is how I’ve written this down. It is adapted from a very sketchy, somewhat different one handwritten in pencil in the “Notes” section in the back of one of the old cookbooks I collect, dated 1939. I’ve made a number of changes to proportions, and added my favorite spice, cardamom. Serves 4.

1 ½ cups red currants
1 cup raspberries
¾ cup sugar
2 T flour
1 T cornstarch
1/4 tea cardamom
pinch of salt
2 egg yolks
2 T water

2 egg whites
1 T sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Gently mix the currants and raspberries with the sugar, flour, cornstarch, and cardamom. Lightly beat the egg yolks with the water and stir it into the berries, blending well. Pour it into buttered ramekins or a partially blind-baked crust (8-12 min at 425 F, cooled). Bake the filling 15 minutes; remove to a rack, and reduce the oven to 325 F. Beat the egg whites with a tablespoon of sugar until it forms stiff peaks but is still moist and shiny; spoon it over the top of the still-warm filling, spreading it to touch the crust or the sides of the ramekins. Bake another 15 minutes at the lower heat. Cool.

Sour Cherry-Currant Preserves

Currants, which are high in pectin, add both flavor and body to this jam. I first made this years ago, when I had cherries and not enough currants to do anything else with. A nice outcome. With or without currants (add lemon, if not), sour cherry jam is special. In addition to spreading it on toast, it is excellent stirred into European-style plain yogurt or vanilla ice cream, and served with cheese and meats, particularly on sandwiches. Makes 2 8-oz jars plus a little extra.

1 cup fresh currants, stemmed
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup water

2 ½ cups pitted sour cherries (about 3 cups before pitting)
2 cups sugar
pinch salt
5” piece fresh stick cinnamon, broken in half

8-10 cherry pits, cracked, and kernels removed

In a small saucepan bring currants and the ¼ cup each of sugar and water to a boil; cook a few minutes, until the fruit breaks down into a mush. Line a measuring cup with a double layer of cheesecloth, and pour the currant mixture in; twist the ends (do not squeeze the contents or the juice may become cloudy) and latch them over the handle, allowing the juice to drain into the cup and keeping it above the liquid. This should yield about ½ cup.

Pit the sour cherries, reserving some pits to dry. Put the cherries in a 3-qt slope-sided pan with the remaining sugar and the salt and cinnamon. Bring to a rolling boil, then reduce heat just a bit and boil, skimming only the true foam from around the edges, for about 12 minutes or until it sheets off the spoon. Remove from the heat, pour into clean jars, and add a few kernels to each. Seal. (To crack cherry pits, wipe off any remaining pulp, and put them in a small baggie. Crack gently, so as not to smash the kernel itself, and separate the kernels from their shells; discard the shells.)