Early yesterday morning I ran into five grad students I know at the Kerrytown farmers' market. Now, we all love the farmers' market, but most of us in an 11am-on-Saturday-morning-en-route-to-brunch kind of way. What could possibly bring so many humanities grad students to wake up before 10am on a weekday in July?Michigan sour cherries, that's what. As often as I complain about Michigan's awful weather, I have to say, the state knows how to grow cherries.
Although I consider myself a seasoned baker, cherry pie is one of those iconic American desserts that I never really thought of baking. It sounds good, but when you think about the reality of the situation, it starts to look more and more like Steinbeck's illusory American Dream. The idea of bright red cherry pie, warm from the oven, with a melty scoop of vanilla ice cream sounds delicious, but fresh cherries have annoying pits in them, and that neon red pie filling in the can just tastes awful.
At first, I was skeptical of the sour cherry--it sounded like a typical Michigan knockoff brand to me. (Want Mexican food? Here's a can of unseasoned diced tomatoes poured over a can of organic black beans.) In other words, like a regular cherry, but not as good.
But boy, was I wrong. The Michigan sour cherry is one of the best fruits with which I have ever had the pleasure to bake. It should be on license plates and the state quarter.
The only drawback to this delicious fruit, is that, like Michigan summers, their season is extremely fleeting. They're only available two weeks out of the year, either in late June or early July, depending on how long winter lasted. So if you want to experience them, don't miss this two-week window! They're hard to find in stores, so your best bet is to hound the farmers' market every day it's open from late June until the cherries show up. There are also farms where you can climb ladders and pick your own cherries.
Sour cherries are SOUR! This means that while they're not very good to eat plain, they are perfect for baking. Most fruit pies require you to add a lot of lemon juice or another souring agent so that the baked fruit does not taste like a sweeter, blander version of the fresh fruit. Sour cherries, however, are so sour that you don't need to add lots of lemon juice--this way, your pie both has character and tastes like pure cherry.
In preparation for the pie my lovely roommate and I were about to bake, I bought a cherry pitter ($12 from Amazon). This reduces the cherry prepping time from about 2 hours to 20 min. It also allows you to make a pie with whole, round cherries rather than with the mangled bits of cherries left over after you've hacked out the pit with a knife. After pitting the cherries, we mixed them with sugar:
Then, of course, we made pie crust:
(And speaking of pie crust, keep your eyes open for an article about how Bessie McAdams makes the best pie crust in the world with vodka and lard. My butter-based pie crust was good and all, but Bessie's pie crust is the best I've ever tasted in my life. More on that to come.)Cherries go in the pie, dotted with butter:
My roommate constructs a beautiful lattice crust:
And the finished product! Eat with ice cream and enjoy!
