The key ingredient: Cherries

Cooking is an act of generosity. But when cherry season rolls around, even Warren Buffet – who’s famously trying to give away billions of dollars – might feel inclined towards a little selfishness.

When I was a child, spring flounced in on the blossoming petticoats of the Washington cherry trees, which frame the monuments and admire their reflections in the Tidal Basin. Cherries had names back then and as I grew, they had sexual connotations. As in, “Did you hear? He popped her cherry!”

But never mind.

Cherries are an ephemeral fruit, and remind me of endless lazy summer days. My grandfather had several cherry trees in his orchard and in the largest one nestled my triple-decker tree house. He grew sour cherries for my grandmother’s three-inch-high pies as well as Royal Anns, meaty Bings, and Chelans – but the yellow Rainiers, blushing red, were what I reached out to pick as I turned the pages. All of the books I read in that tree were stained crimson.

As a bartender I learnt to tie the stem of a maraschino cherry used to garnish a Manhattan or a Rob Roy with my tongue (no hands!).  And my wine fundi friends are always banging on about smelling “a hint of cherry on the nose”. All this is well and good, but the cherry-eating season is short, so we need to get to it.

With high anticipation I await the delivery of the first boxes of cherries from Ceres. I will freeze some, make jams and pies, sauces, bread, salads and even soup. And yet I am in complete agreement with British food writer Nigel Slater, who offers a recipe in one of his cookbooks called “Cherries in a Bag”, in which he says he remains “unconvinced that their flavour is better for the application of heat”. He surely joined us when we lived in London, in stopping for those paper bags full of cherries from pavement vendors for the bus ride.

Cherries are a happy fruit. Find them as a flirty print on the fabric of a flouncy frock or holding hands with a twin. A cherry on top beats the icing on the cake and it’s always the best boiled sweet in the bag. The cherry-red Fender Stratocaster was inevitably played by the cutest boy in the band; autumn leaves, fire engines, lipstick and hot sauce are all the better for sharing the shouty colour.

I love gooey grilled cheese sandwiches made with Camembert or goat cheese and cherries roasted with balsamic vinegar. You can make a salsa out of cherries with chillies, lime juice, shallots and fresh coriander, which goes well with a pork fillet you’ve turned on the braai for 15 minutes or so, or grilled fish.

Duck and quail are happy hunkering down with cherries under a port sauce duvet, and caramelising an onion with about a cup and a half of pitted, chopped cherries and then dousing them with a splosh of cider vinegar lifts the humble hamburger.

In the West, cherries are an often-overlooked partner for lamb. Cooks from Egypt, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkey – from whence cherries come, and which remains the world’s largest producer – all pair lamb or mutton with cherries, whether as a pilaf or kebabs, a stew or a roast along with any combination of onions, saffron, almonds, mint, or pistachios.

You can bake cherries into breads or cakes along with walnuts, hazelnuts, or almonds and cinnamon, or add them to salads. Sear and cool strips of boneless chicken breasts and mix them into lettuce with cherries and walnuts. Dress with a mixture of sour cream, goat cheese, chives, vinegar and a little water to loosen. Season with salt and lots of pepper.

That dishy baker, Paul Hollywood, known now more for judging The Great British Bake Off than for his marvellous breads, mixes cherries straight into his bread dough along with the zest of oranges and lemons for a sour cherry bread. In another recipe for a “luxurious bread” he has us fold in chocolate along with the sour cherries.

If you like your cherries with chocolate, the sour morello is the latter’s best consort. Arm-in-arm in Black Forest gâteau or rolled up in a tight embrace in a pancake, theirs is a love affair rivalled only by that of chocolate and raspberries.

Nigella makes a chocolate muffin with morello jam swirled through, and the ice-cream empire of Ben and Jerry offers us morellos and chocolate chunks in each scoop of Cherry Garcia, named of course for the Grateful Dead’s guitarist. Often, late at night, cherries from fancy chocolatiers are known to loll around in tiny paper cups drunk on kirsch in their lover’s chocolate overcoat.

Now, while cherry clafoutis, New York cherry cheesecake, cherry cobbler and cherry crisp are all temptress desserts, if I had to choose just one to seduce me it would be old-fashioned cherry pie. And it must have a lattice top, so the cherry filling can ooze up: fragrant, warm, and glossy.

Fill a pie pan with half a recipe for very flaky shortcrust; roll out the rest and cut into strips. Chill them both (the strips under clingfilm on a baking tray to keep them separate). Mix up the cherry filling and heap it onto the dough. Depending on the size of your pie pan, use at least five or six cups (or more) of cherries, washed and pitted, a couple of tablespoons of Maizena, 250ml of sugar (less if they’re very sweet cherries), and half a lemon. Dot the filling once it’s in the pan with about 25g of butter. YouTube will show you how to construct the lattice top. Bake in a hot oven and serve it à la mode (with vanilla ice cream). You’ll be forgiven for having seconds.

And all that said, as much as I love cherry pie, that handful of cherries (all mine!) with a good book remains an enduring pleasure.

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