Cherry-tastic
- Summer's cherries are here! So too are some hints on ways to love them; plus a collection of recipes from pickling and jamming to Cherry Sherry Trifle
Summer’s cherries are here! Hooray! Are they a little earlier this season than recent years? It feels like maybe they are. Which of course sounds alarm bells of seasonal shifts that are not to be ignored, even as I excitedly ponder all the gorgeous ways of heartily embracing cherry-dom longer / earlier than I’d hoped.
I’ve pulled together below my customary hints, tips and nudges for flavour partners to help you find different ways to love them through the length of their season. Drawn as ever from the pages of Seasoning but the recipes that follow below don’t because, for reasons I now can’t at all remember, Seasoning has pages of cherry lovin’ ideas but only the one full cherry recipe. (It’s for White Bean, Pickled Radish and Cherry Salad which I’d say is so good it’s almost worth the price of the book itself.)
So, read on for my tips to loving cherries in all their sweet and savoury summerness - and then at the end is a clutch of cherry recipes, of which Cherry Sherry Trifle is the indulgent wow-factor pièce de résistance:
Cherry and Elderflower Jam
Pickled Cherries
Labneh toast with quick-pickled cherries and crisp sage leaves
Cherry Sherry Trifle
And now I remember, too, that my Borough Market book has a fab recipe for cherry meringue roulade if you have that to hand.
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Cherry-tastic tips and flavour partners
Rich, smooth, cool dairy is a calm base for the bouncy flavours of cherries to play on. Perhaps in a cheesecake, or cherry ice cream, or….
….seasonal young goats’ cheeses or labneh make excellent flavour bridges for putting cherries with mackerel, in a long- established partnership and an idea worth extending to other oily fish. That includes anchovies, whose umami hit always brings out the best in savoury cherry dishes.
Reach for almost any wine or spirit with your cherries and they’ll be happy. For a
quick compôte to serve with vanilla ice cream or alongside a simple loaf cake: poach pitted cherries in red wine, white wine, limoncello, vermouth or brandy along with a little sugar, orange zest and some cinnamon; chill until needed.
Try giving a squeeze of orange juice or zesting its skin into sweet or savoury dishes that feature cherries. Grapefruit is the next-in-line citrus for cherry affinity. Lemons and limes not so much.
This for anyone who remembers cherry liquorice wheels as a kid (love them or hate them they were a smart flavour partnership): A little liquorice paste or syrup will give the same idea – with rather more sophistication – to sweet cherry recipes. Go steady, a little is plenty, when adding to a cherry tart, pie or crumble.
Cherries’ fragrant, floral notes can be balanced with spices such as ground ginger
and cinnamon; strengthened with lavender, rose, vanilla or hibiscus.
If you like the sound of those there’s plenty more where they came from in Seasoning….
And now for the recipes:
Cherry & Elderflower Jam
Move along, raspberries and strawberries. This is the very best of jams for preserving the flavours of summer. So fruity and fresh-tasting for heaping onto a crust of bread, with scones, spooning into the middle layer of a Victoria sponge, or really however you like your jam. It can also become a lovely savoury sauce for game meats, beef or duck if you heat it through with a tablespoon or so of sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar.
Note this is a fairly soft-set jam. For a firmer jam, use ‘jam sugar’ with its added pectin instead of regular sugar, or add in a few high-pectin red or black currants.
1kg large, sweet cherries
2 lemons
500g granulated sugar
4-6 tbsp elderflower cordial
2 x 450ml jars, sterilised
Pit the cherries then roughly chop them to a mix of sizes. Put into a non-corrosive pan along with the zest and juice of the two lemons. Cook over a medium heat for approx 10 mins or until the fruit is soft and beginning to collapse. While the cherries are cooking, put a couple of saucers into the freezer (to use later for checking when the jam is done).
Take the pan off the heat, stir in the sugar, return to the heat and bring to a rolling boil. Stir frequently to make sure the sugar on the base of the pan doesn’t overcook. After about 20 minutes - but more importantly, as soon you start to feel it beginning to gel - take the pan off the heat, put a small spoonful of the mixture onto one of the frozen saucers. Set aside for a minute and then run your finger through the sample. The jam is ready when the line your finger leaves is not immediately filled by the jam re-pooling together. If it’s not ready yet, put the pan back on the heat for a minute or two and test again.
When the jam is ready - and remember, it will set properly in its jar, not in the pan - take off the heat. Let it cool a little, then stir in the elderflower cordial. Add more or less to taste. Cool the jam to room temperature before spooning into the sterilised jars. Store in the fridge.
