Sour Cherry Pie

Something exciting happened at my house in the past week: my first harvest from the garden. I got lots of snap peas and English peas, plus buttercrunch lettuce and Nantes carrots (shown above). These are a French heirloom carrot that do well in heavier clay soils because they stay short and compact.

I also made a sour cherry pie, which I haven't made since I took a college cooking class and dubbed this pie the Platonic Ideal of a Cherry Pie. You can make cherry pie with the sweet cherries we find here in California, but it is a very different thing from this pie. You have to find sour cherries, which I found at Whole Foods in the frozen aisle. They don't sell them fresh out here because sour cherry trees grow where the weather gets much colder than in our temperate climate.

But the search for sour cherries, even if frozen, is totally worth the trouble. This pie has that complex sweet/art classic cherry pie flavor, but a homemade pie texture that makes all of those glooey Hostess Cherry Pies I ate as a child hang their heads in shame (or would if pies had heads).

I use tapioca instead of cornstarch because I L-O-V-E the texture of tapioca in pies, but you are welcome to follow the recipe as is. I use the Perfect Pie Crust recipe posted here, brush the lattice top with egg white and sprinkle with coarse sugar before baking. Serve with vanilla ice cream and you'll be in heaven.

Sour Cherry Pie

1 recipe Perfect Pie Crust
3 1/3 c. fresh or frozen sour cherries
1 c. sugar
1/4 c. + 1 T. Thickgel OR cornstarch
1 1/3 c. water or juice from cherries
1/4 tsp. almond extract
1 T. + 1 tsp. fresh lemon juice

Rinse and pit fresh cherries or thaw frozen cherries. Combine sugar and thickening agent in a large pot with water or juice from cherries. If desired, add almond extract. Stir mixture and cook over medium heat until mixture thickens and begins to bubble. Add lemon juice and boil 1 minute, stirring constantly. Fold in cherries. Cool before filling prepared pie crust. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes until golden brown on top and the filling is bubbling. Cool on a wire rack before cutting.

Alice Waters' Cherry Clafoutis

We never seem to get sour cherries in my neck of the states, but sweet cherries are being sold like crazy in streetside stands and markets everywhere this time of year. I bought a big bag yesterday that were cheap and looked nice, but it turned out they weren't too sweet, so I decided to bake with them.

For help, I turned to Alice Waters, the queen of regional fruit desserts. Decidedly French in spirit if not nationality, Waters' desserts are consistently subtle, light, and almost always feature the very best in fresh fruit.

Well, my fruit wasn't the very best, but when used in a cherry clafoutis, you could hardly tell. This traditional French dessert is sometimes very custardy and rich, but this version is more of a light cake topping over baked sweet cherries. The reserved cherry juice is thickened into a sweet-tart syrup that only heightens the flavor.

WARNING: If you are averse to the idea of perfuming your entire kitchen and the surrounding areas with the heavenly scent of cherry, almond, and lemon, this might not be the dish for you. However, if you are a fan of aroma therapy, by all means make this cherry clafoutis. The smell is to die for, not to mention the taste.

Cherry Clafoutis
From Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook by Alice Waters

1 lb. sweet cherries, washed and pitted (I halved mine)
2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
1/4 tsp. grated lemon zest
A pinch ground cinnamon
1/3 c. sugar (or more, depending on the sweetness of the cherries)
2 eggs, separated
3 T. sugar
2 T. flour
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. almond extract
1/3 c. cream
A pinch salt
Powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 350F. Lightly butter a baking pan large enough to hold the cherries loosely in a single layer. Prepare the cherries and arrange them in the pan. Sprinkle with the lemon juice, zest, cinnamon, and sugar. Bake until the fruit is tender, about 15 minutes, stirring once or twice.

Raise the oven temperature to 375F. butter another dish large enough to hold the cherries in a single layer (I used a medium rectangular Pyrex). Drain the cooked cherries, reserving their juice in a small saucepan. Arrange the cherries in the bottom of your baking dish. Beat together the egg yolks and sugar until well blended. Beat in the flour, vanilla, almond extract, and cream.

Beat the egg white with a pinch of salt until they form soft peaks. Stir a little of the whites into the batter, and then carefully fold in the rest. Pour the batter over the fruit in the baking dish, letting a little fruit show through the top.

Bake in the upper third of the oven for about 20 minutes, until the batter has puffed and browned. While the clafoutis is baking, reduce the fruit juices to a thin syrup. When the clafoutis is done, dust it with powdered sugar and serve warm with a drizzle of the syrup.

Sweet Cherry Cobbler

Towards the end of last summer, when the last of the cherries were on sale, I bought a bunch of them, pitted and halved them, and froze them. Now, it's the middle of January, fresh cherries are still a yet-to-be-realized promise of a distant spring. Yet, even on a cold and rainy winter day, I was able to pull out one of my trusty bags of frozen fruit and whip up a cherry cobbler for dessert! (Thank goodness for freezers!)

I found a recipe online that used sweet cherries, which are more widely available in California than the sour cherries more commonly used in baking. I definitely tweaked the original recipe according to my whim and fancy, and it came out pretty darn good. I doubled the biscuit topping, which is very hearty, due to the inclusion of whole wheat flour. I sprinkled the biscuits with turbinado sugar, because I like the texture of it. I also added lemon to perk up the flavor with a nice, fresh citrus element.

Sweet Cherry Cobbler

For the filling:
About 3 cups of sweet cherries, pitted and halved
2 T. water (if using fresh cherries; if using frozen cherries, omit this water)
1/4 c. sugar
2 tsp. cornstarch
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
2 T. squeezed fresh lemon juice

For the topping:
1 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 c. whole wheat flour

1 T. white granulated sugar
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
Zest of 1 lemon, grated
3 T. cold unsalted butter
2/3 c. low-fat buttermilk
1 T. turbinado sugar

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Cook the cherries, water, sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, lemon juice and a pink of salt in a saucepan until the sugar dissolves, just a few minutes. If you use frozen cherries, omit the water. Pour the filling in a 9-inch pie plate.

Whisk the flour, white sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Blend in the butter with a pastry cutter until the butter is in little chunks and well dispersed throughout. Stir in the buttermilk with a fork just until blended. Drop the crumbly dough in mounds over the filling and sprinkle with the turbinado sugar. Bake about 20-25 minutes until the topping is golden brown and the cherry filling is bubbling. Serve warm.