By Joelle Abramowitz
You can purchase your ingredients at any local farmer’s market.
This month’s seasonal recipes make use of a Michigan staple: cherries. Michigan is a leader in cherry production, accounting for 70 percent of the nation’s tart cherries. Gil Marks, the author of The Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, explains that “Cherries are part of the cuisine of nearly every Jewish community,” including Persian rice dishes, Syrian meat preparations, Ashkenazi jams, soups, and desserts, and more. To make use of the cherries themselves, I share a recipe for cherry, chile, and cilantro salad. In this dish, the cilantro and jalapeno provide vegetal and spicy flavors to round out the sweet cherries. While the recipe calls for pitting the cherries, there are many other uses for the pits. To avoid letting them go to waste, I also include a recipe for cherry pit syrup, which makes a refreshing beverage with almond flavors when combined with seltzer and ice. The pits can also be infused in alcohol, vinegar, cream, or other liquids to impart an almond-like flavor.
Cherry, Chile, and Cilantro Salad
Adapted from Hila Alpert
Serves 6-8
Pareve
Ingredients
1½ pounds fresh sweet cherries, pitted and sliced in half
1 cup chopped fresh cilantro, or to taste
3 to 4 jalapeños, cored, seeded, and finely chopped
3 or 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon kosher salt
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
Preparation
Put the cherries, cilantro, jalapeños, garlic, salt and olive oil in a large bowl and stir well until all the ingredients are evenly distributed. Chill until refreshingly cold. Serve the salad chilled.
Cherry Pit Syrup
From Stella Parks
Pareve
Ingredients
7 ounces cherry pits (about 1 heaping cup; 200 g); (see notes)
3 1/2 ounces plain or toasted sugar (about 1/2 cup; 100 g)
Pinch of salt, to taste
1 drop rose water, or more to taste (optional)
1 drop almond extract, or more to taste (optional)
Preparation
In a small bowl or pint Mason jar, combine cherry pits and sugar (and husk of a juiced lime, if using; see notes). Toss until well combined, then cover tightly and set aside for 3 hours or up to 24 hours. Shake bowl or jar occasionally to toss pits around and help sugar dissolve.
When sugar has completely dissolved, strain syrup through a fine-mesh sieve. (The pits will still have enough flavor left to make a batch of cherry pit whipped cream, if you’d like to arm yourself with the perfect set of toppings for a cherry sundae.)
Season syrup with a pinch of salt and a drop or two of rose water and/or almond extract to taste. Please use care in adding these potent ingredients; while a very small amount of each can go a long way toward balancing the flavor of the syrup, the effect can be overwhelming if too much is added.
Transfer syrup to an airtight container and refrigerate for up to 1 month. Use as a dessert sauce or as a replacement for simple syrup in drinks.
Notes: If you’re using sweet cherries, it may help to include the empty husk of a juiced lime as part of the weight listed for the pits, to furnish the syrup with a bit of acidity to balance the sweetness of the fruit and sugar. Adding juice to taste at the end will only dilute the syrup and shorten its shelf life, while maceration with the rind will draw out both acidity and a pleasant hint of bitterness to balance the syrup. The syrup can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to one month.
Dr. Joelle Abramowitz writes a monthly Substack newsletter, the Gastronomist Economist, and has written about Jewish food for the Detroit Jewish News, jew-ish.com, and The Forward, among other outlets. Originally from New Jersey, Joelle now considers herself a Michigander, after living in Ann Arbor for the last ten years. When she is not in the kitchen or writing about it, she daylights as research faculty studying health and labor economics at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.