Cherry season is here and they are amazing. They’re HUGE, like little apples almost. I’ve probably eaten a five pounds of cherries over the past two weeks, just phenomenal.
Does anyone have a good fresh cherry recipe? No deserts please (unless it’s a pudding).
I keep having a vision of spiced couscous tossed with toasted almond slivers and fresh cherry halves, but I want to try something more creative than that before the season is over.
Chim-Bim
Wash a metric buttload of cherries. In a big jar, or a bunch of little jars, layer cherries. For every inch of cherries, add a single layer of sugar cubes. Repeat. Every third layer of so, toss in a few cloves. When the jar is crammed as full as it can get, fill with cheap bourbon. Seal. Keep in a dark place for 6 months or so. Serve cherries over French Vanilla ice cream, with the nectar in a shot glass.
Drugs are for poor people when you have this around. 
This stuff is just wonderful:
CHERRY-ONION CHUTNEY
2-1/2 lbs. fresh pitted cherries
1 cup yellow onion, diced
2 Tbs. fresh ginger, minced
1-1/2 cups white sugar
1/4 tsp. mustard seed
1/4 tsp. celery seed
1/8 tsp. ground allspice
1/2 tsp. ground coriander
1/8 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. dried red pepper flakes
1 tsp. salt
1-1/2 cups white-wine vinegar
Combine all ingredients in a heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook for about one hour or until a little syrupy. Remove from heat (sauce will thicken as it cools). Serve warm or at room temperature.
Pretty simple…but Kmarts has a special on Ice Cream Makers right now… Make a simple syrup- pour it hot over the cherries- let it chill annd it to homemade churn ice cream. Probably the finest of fresh.
Cherries and Fresh Ginger over Tuna… that might be something new.
This might work, it might not. I sometimes come up with recipes or basis for recipes in my mind. Probably been done before, but I’m not sure. This just sounded good and it’s where my mind took me.
Tuna with Cherry Ginger Sauce
2-4 Tuna Steaks
1/2-1 pint fresh pitted Cherries
1-2 Tbsps. fresh grated Ginger
1/4 cup of Yuzu
1/2 cup of Cherry Juice
1 tbsp sugar or honey
dash of Rice Wine Vinegar
dash of salt
pinch of dried chili flakes or 1 dried red chili.
Salt, pepper, and oil the tuna steaks. Grill the tuna steaks to desired doneness.
Prepare the sauce by combining all of the ingredients and sauteeing/simmering to a lightly reduced sauce. Spoon the Cherry sauce over the grilled Tuna Steaks.
You wanted cherry pudding? I doubt you’ll find one as traditional as this 14th C. Cherry pudding called Chireseye:
For to make chireseye, tak chiryes at þe feast of Seynt Iohn þe Baptist, & do awey þe stonys. Grynd hem in a morter, & after frot hem wel in a seue so þat the ius be wel comyn owt; & do þan in a pot & do þerein feyre gres or botor & bred of wastel ymyid, & of sugur a god perty, & a porcioun of wyn. & wan it is wel ysodyn & ydessyd in dyschis, stik þerin clowis of gilofre & strew þeron sugur.
or, for a redaction into modern English : Here
It’s a little like a summer pudding of only cherries, but mashed up. Unfortunately, December is cherry season here. Only 6 months to go…
Huh, no desserts either, maybe I was in a sugar coma last night. Thanks for the submissions, I think I’ll try that chutney this week served over dry porkchops.
I bought a big crate of cherries at a local market the other day and I intended to use some of them on some kind of roast meat - I think they would go quite well with a gammon roast - maybe just halve them and lay them on top along with some brown sugar and let the whole lot turn into a sort of caramelised jammy topping as the meat cooks.
I didn’t get to try this out because a)I didn’t have any gammon to roast and b)the kids ate all the cherries.