It’s cherry season, which is hard not to notice in fruit displays. The ubiquity and popularity of cherries contrasts surprisingly with the few suggestions for what to do with them. Only a few other types of fruit should have such a few recipes. Even the British cookbook author Nigel Slater, who wrote one of the most comprehensive bestsellers about garden fruit cuisine in the last 20 years with Tender. He is right.
Gourmetbibel France, one of the last volumes on French cuisine and almost a standard work, talks a lot about what fantastic varieties Europe’s great cherry nation grows, from the sweet and sour Celeste to the soft Bellise, an outwardly innocuous pink, but the blood-red “Cherry Napoleon”. There you can also learn that the president of France has traditionally received the first trays with the harvest of the Sere region for 90 years. But there are only two dishes on this topic: a simple cherry tart and the famous blue lobster with cherries, raspberries and strawberries from three-star chef Anne-Sophie Peek. There is nothing between them. In the past, such a cookbook could mention the famous dessert, which the monumental chef of France, Auguste Escoffier, prepared for the anniversary of Queen Victoria. But cherries flambéed with kirsch on vanilla ice cream is a dessert that even a retired Mon Chéri marketer wouldn’t call modern today.
Cherries can save a summer salad
To rediscover a cherry, it is worth looking away from the pastry shop. After all, one should know to some degree how well a fruit works in a sweet context, that it can be safely combined with almonds, nuts, cinnamon, coffee or vanilla, for example. І кожен, хто з’їв шматочок доброго шварцвальдського шварцвальдського шварцвальдського шварцвальдського шварцвальдського шварцвальдського шварцвальдського шварцвальдського шварцвальдського шварцвальдського шварцвальдського шварцвальдського шварцвальдського шварцвальдського шварцвальдського шварцвальдського шварцвальдського ґато, знає про його партнерів мрії – шоколад і вершки. Which, by the way, does not mean that confectioners eat it simply with a cherry. When working with dough and cherries, you’ll usually find out how quickly things get annoying, like all the soupy soups through the cake base, but it’s really only minor.
But let’s move on to the soulful part of a summer evening. Cherries and sour cherries are easiest to get into through a salad, where they pair beautifully with anything umami-like, thanks to their juicy fruitiness (and somewhat different from, say, the slightly aromatic and slightly snobbish strawberry). ). Nigel Slater, for example, likes to remind people how well cherries go with all kinds of salt (pork) meat. For a great summer salad, he combines four handfuls of pitted and halved cherries with four handfuls of young leaves, spinach and/or rocket and almost 100g of finely chopped ham (such as Parma, Coppa or Tyrolean bacon). For the sauce, mix 1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard with 2 teaspoons of red wine vinegar, 50 ml of olive oil and 3 tablespoons of crème fraîche, season with a pinch of salt, freshly ground pepper and a little chopped parsley. Mix cherries, lettuce and ham, drizzle with vinaigrette and serve. If you don’t have an appetite for ham, you can combine cherries in salads with chalky, salty goat cheese – a dream combination.
A simple compote of morello cherries cooked with (a little) sugar is a suitable accompaniment to hot-smoked fish such as trout or sea bream, although a more sophisticated cherry chutney would be a little more elegant. Then this combination can be easily diversified for vegan cuisine – with smoked tofu, which is simply fried in cubes in a pan.
Advanced cooks finally combine cherries with lamb or even with game, in Eastern European or Levantine cuisine, acidic varieties such as Morello or Montmorency cherries are considered an equivalent substitute for apricots, for example, in Turkish pilaf with pieces of lamb, cherries, onions, saffron, pistachios, m yata, it is endless. However, cookery writers such as Nigel Slater have identified beef tongue as a perennial cherry dream due to its tenderness and buttery taste, almost reminiscent of Black Forest cake. But, of course, now many people will find that there is no need to rush things right away, a nice summer salad with cherries is also a good start.
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