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July 9, 2009

Quick tip: pitting cherries

OK, so this is my first ever cooking video. Not great, but I learn by doing, so I'm going to start just doing. Bear with me as I learn.

With most cherry recipes, first you have to start by pitting your cherries. Pitting cherries can be a messy job. My advice is to wear gloves and an apron. I've tried a lot of different ways to pit cherries and this method that uses a chef's knife is the easiest one that I've found, plus it doesn't require any tools.

With the side of a chef's knife, lightly press on each cherry. This splits the cherry open and then you can easily remove the pit and stem. Like this:

Posted July 9, 2009 9:18 AM in Quick Tip | Comments (3)

July 7, 2009

Life's a bowl of roasted cherries

As soon as I see the pick-your-own strawberry signs go up around town, I start dreaming of local cherries. Until about 10 years ago, I had no idea that cherries grew in Londonderry, but one day I stumbled upon the fact that we have two orchards in town where we can pick cherries: Sunnycrest Farm and Elwood Orchards. I've wanted to keep it a secret, but it is too good to not share.

Sweet cherries have long been my favorite fruit. When I was a kid, the first cherry sales at the grocery stores seemed to coincide with the end of school. My mom also loves cherries. We celebrated the start of summer with my mom buying a huge amount of cherries; everyone sat around the table and munched on them until our fingers were stained red. It was one of the few times when we didn't have to observe normal table manners.

While waiting not-so-patiently for cherry picking to start, I started thinking about cherry shortcake, probably because it was strawberry season and strawberry shortcake was mentioned everywhere. Strawberry shortcake is good, but I was fixated on cherry shortcake.

Another thing that was on my mind was Cherry Garcia ice cream, cherries and chocolate. Yum. The next thing I knew, I was making a Cherry Garcia-inspired Cherry Shortcake.

Roasting cherries is so easy and results in absolute deliciousness. Plus an added benefit is that the cherries are really easy to pit once roasted.

Oops, I forgot to take a picture of the pitted roasted cherries.

Roasted Cherries

7 cups cherries, stemmed but not pitted
1 tablespoon olive oil

Preheat oven to 400F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil. Place cherries on baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and toss to coat. Bake for 35 minutes. The cherries will soften and start to split. Remove the pan from the oven and set aside for 20-30 minutes to let the cherries cool. Once the cherries are cool, you can easily squeeze the pits from the cherries. Again, wear gloves, or your fingers will be stained. Scrape the cherry juice and the cherries from the pan into a bowl, cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

Actually, you can use any amount of cherries. Just toss them with a bit of olive oil. You'll end up with about 1/3 to 1/4 the volume of cherries that you start with. It was hard to resist eating them, but I really wanted cherry shortcake.