It's been a really long time. Blogging was put on the far back burner while I dealt with residency and life, and then I wasn't sure if I would or should ever come back to it. But the truth it, I was still coming back to this blog all the time to find my favorite recipes, and then I've been developing new ones and struggling to keep track of them on post it notes and emails to myself.
So in a fit of optimism, I will write about this new recipe I tried today, in the hopes that it will be a keeper.
We hit the end of Rainier cherry season in Washington, which always makes me sad because those cherries are one of my favorite things at the farmer's market. The last week I bought them, I knew it was the end of the season, but I persisted in buying several pounds anyway. Because of Covid19, I could not painstakingly hand select each and every cherry, so I got many many bruised ones that just weren't that tasty. They were also getting to that too sweet point that they hit at the end of the season, where the tart balance just isn't there any more. I'd never baked or cooked or done anything with Rainiers except eat them fresh, so I had to do my research.
It turns out, very few people recommend cooking or baking with them. Because, as I said, they are too sweet. You need a little acid to make things taste balanced.
However, I did find some recipes for cocktail cherries aka Maraschino cherries (or Luxardo cherries) which immediately piqued my interest because I. Love. Cocktail. Cherries. I'm not a big cocktail drinker because alcohol makes me feel both sleepy and also vaguely ill, but I'll happily sip a Shirley Temple. And so I went and bought myself a cherry pitter (did you know they make cherry pitters that pit six cherries at a time??? I'm not normally a kitchen gadget person so this blew my mind a little), cooked up a little syrup, and now I'm sitting at the counter admiring some jars of cherries marinading in sweetness.
A lot of recipes I read depended on a lot of alcohol or, conversely, no flavoring at all except water and sugar. I decided I didn't like either of these options, so I looked for cherry juice. I couldn't find any at Costco, and because there's a pandemic going on currently, I decided I wasn't going to another store and so pomegranate juice would work just fine.
Here's what I threw together:
- 1 cup pomegranate juice (100% juice, no sugar added)
- 2/3 cup granulated sugar
- pinch of salt
- small piece of a cinnamon stick (I smash whole sticks with my mortar and pestle)
- two allspice berries
- 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
- a dozen cherry pits, smashed (again, with my mortar and pestle)
- splash of leftover red wine that's been in my fridge for 2-3 weeks, maybe 2 shots?
- splash of bourbon, less than 1/2 a shot
- splash of honey drinking vinegar because I am fancy and have that in my fridge (it was a gift from a friend)
- 1/2 cup of water
I had already pitted about a pound of Rainier cherries. Some of the pits I saved to cook, since that's apparently a technique (says Google and other food blogs) for infusing some bitter almond flavor. Possibly from the cyanide. It's fine though, just take some extra Vitamin B12*.
I let all that come to a boil and then simmer for about 10 minutes,** then I poured it through a strainer, and into my glass jars filled with cherries. And tada! They were gorgeous in their redness. Also, I did have some extra juice, which I tasted and it is delicious. What a way to come back to blogging.
*This is not medical advice.
**According to my brief internet research, at least 50% of the alcohol is gone.
***No pictures because this is always what has made me so slow about posting.
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