Cherries started showing up at the market at the beginning of the month, and like a good Michigander, I've been stuffing my face with them ever since. We take our cherries seriously here in Michigan. When you go to a local wine shop, you'll often find a Michigan shelf that includes a cherry wine or two. (By the way, if you ever find cherry wine for sale, pick up a bottle or two – it's delicious stuff!) The first weekend of each July, Traverse City hosts the national cherry festival. But I think my favorite Michigan cherry tradition is one of the simplest: driving through the northwestern lower peninsula this time of year, the ubiquitous roadside cherry stands beckon with a bounty of sweet red fruit. If you're lucky, the stands won't just have fresh cherries, but also cherry pies. If this is the case, drop everything and buy one right away, then rush to the grocery for some vanilla ice cream and have yourself a feast: this is sure to be a cherry pie par excellence.
After all of my gushing about cherries, I'm a little embarrassed to say that as a kid, I wouldn't eat cherries. I think it was about the pits: I didn't like the idea of having to spit something out with every cherry you ate. Eventually though, in New Jersey of all places, I did learn to love fresh cherries, and I'm sure I've been making up for lost time ever since. Luckily, I never confused fresh cherries for cherry pie, which I would happily scarf down any time I had the chance.
I'm not sure when I made my first cherry pie – maybe in high school. I'm sure I've made my fair share of them since then. But pies, with their fussy crusts that need to be kept cool and then double baked in a hot oven to stay crisp, seem so counterintuitive in summer, when the house is too hot to keep a crust cool and will get hotter with the extra oven time. Much better, I think, to toss together a quick crumble topping and make the process much quicker – this way, it only takes an hour and a half for pitting cherries, instead of an hour and a half for cherries and another hour for dealing with crust. Much better, indeed.
I'm not sure when I made my first cherry pie – maybe in high school. I'm sure I've made my fair share of them since then. But pies, with their fussy crusts that need to be kept cool and then double baked in a hot oven to stay crisp, seem so counterintuitive in summer, when the house is too hot to keep a crust cool and will get hotter with the extra oven time. Much better, I think, to toss together a quick crumble topping and make the process much quicker – this way, it only takes an hour and a half for pitting cherries, instead of an hour and a half for cherries and another hour for dealing with crust. Much better, indeed.
Finally, before we move onto the recipe (and I promise, after all these months, we really are getting there!), a word about the title of this post, which does not arise solely from my childhood love of cherry pie. When I was growing up, I had a book called Cherry Pie Baby. It's a picture book about a girl and a boy who strike a bargain: the girl, who has always wanted a sibling and whose father is a baker, trades a cherry pie for the baby brother of a boy from a huge family. It's cute and clever and a fun read. I hated that book. I think it's because it was read to me for the first time when I was in first grade and quarantined at home with chicken pox during the week of Halloween. At the time, I was quite certain it was the most miserable week of my life. I think that misery tainted my experience of the book, which I refused to read again for probably more than a decade. Thankfully, though, the association did not carry so far as to taint my experience of cherry pie itself!
Cherry Crumble
Cherry pies (or crumbles) are fantastic because they are so tart-sweet. To achieve this, you'll need to use sour cherries. Unfortunately, they don't grow in that many places in the US outside of the Pacific Northwest and Michigan, so I guess that means you'll just need to come for a visit. For a few brief weeks in July, you may be able to find fresh sour cherries at a market or supermarket. If you do, snatch them up immediately and bake yourself a pie (or crumble) while you can - there's nothing quite like fresh cherry pie (or crumble.) I say pie or crumble interchangeably because this recipe would work very well with a pie crust, too: use your favorite double crust in place of the crumble topping and you'll have a decadent dessert indeed. But if you're like me and pie crust in the summer seems like entirely too much trouble, a crumble is far quicker and easier, and quite delicious.
Be sure to taste your cherries while they're raw to get a sense of how tart they are. If they are particularly tart, you may wish to add a little additional sugar; if they're milder, a little less sugar suffice. There's no clear-cut rule, here, but use your judgment and it will turn out beautifully.
Finally, a word about pitting cherries: there's no quick and easy way to do this. Pull up a chair, invite a friend or two, turn on the TV or radio, and be ready to spend a fair amount of time at it. If you've got a cherry pitter, here's your opportunity to dig it out from the bottom of the drawer and use it! If not, you can use what I use: a wooden skewer, like for making satay or kebabs. Using the pointy end of the skewer, poke a hole in the bottom end of the cherry (opposite where the stem was) until you reach the pit. Then flip the skewer around and poke the flat end through the hold you just created to push the pit out through the stem end. I find it's best to do this over a large bowl with a strainer set in it to catch the pits and the juice, which will inevitably spurt out in all directions when you're poking the cherries.
1 quart fresh tart cherries, washed and pitted
3/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons corn starch
1/8 teaspoon salt
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Stir together cherries, sugar, corn starch, and salt. Let sit for 20 minutes to meld and get deliciously juicy, then pour into a 9" pie plate. Sprinkle with crumble topping.
Bake for 40 minutes, or until crumble topping is golden brown and cherry filling is bubbling. Serve immediately with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Serves four to eight, depending on your willingness to share. Leftovers should be covered with plastic wrap and refrigerated.
Bake for 40 minutes, or until crumble topping is golden brown and cherry filling is bubbling. Serve immediately with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Serves four to eight, depending on your willingness to share. Leftovers should be covered with plastic wrap and refrigerated.
2 comments:
Here's my cherry-pitting tip: Pull a paperclip open to create an s-shape. Poke the larger end into the stem end of the cherry, hook the pit and pull it out. Voila! Very fast!
Here in WI we get fresh cherries from Door County (the long thin piece of land that divides Green Bay from Lake Michigan) at our farmer's market. You have to arrive right when the market opens to get the tart pie cherries as they are always in short supply.
I've never tried pitting cherries with a paperclip - thanks for the tip! I'll have try it out next time I need to pit a big batch of 'em.
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