Hey there, If you’ve found your way here but are not yet subscribed for the weekly newsletter, you can do that here. You will never miss a recipe or a story, and I’ll be eternally grateful for your support.
Two months ago, as you may remember, I briefly lost my mind when artichoke season arrived. My favorite elusive vegetable was suddenly available, and I was determined to cook as many artichokes in as many ways possible for as long as I could.
Well, the madness is back—but this time, the focus of my obsession is cherries. Like artichokes, you can technically find cherries in many grocery stores for most of the year. But out of season they tend to be 1. not that great 2. exorbitantly expensive. (Such chutzpah to be simultaneously mediocre and pricey!) So when a grocery store near me had these early-season stunners on sale, I did not hold back.
The cherries I purchased in South Brooklyn might not have been *quite* as divine as the ones I picked straight from the tree in Tuscany many years ago (sigh…). But they were still an unmitigated delight—sweet-tart and juicy.
Finding inspiring ways to cook with fresh cherries (both sweet and sour varieties) is never a problem. “Cherries are part of the cuisine of nearly every Jewish community,” writes Gil Marks in his Encyclopedia of Jewish Food. In Persian Jewish cuisine they are stirred into pilafs and other rice dishes. Syrian Jews blend cherries into sauces for meatballs. Rome’s Jewish community bakes sour cherry jam into tarts and pies. Hungarian and German Jews sip chilled cherry soups and bake up tender, fruit-studded cherry cakes and sumptuous cherry strudels. Ground cherry pits even make their way into desserts as mahlab.
I decided to keep this week’s recipe super simple, but with high flavor impact: Sweet Cherry Quick Jam. With Shavuot only a couple of weeks away, there are going to be many cheesecakes and cheese blintzes to top, and this bright jam, which is enlivened with orange juice and orange zest would make just the thing. “Since cherries make their appearance in early summer, which means they…often arrive in time for Shavuot, cherry dishes became traditional for that holiday,” Marks writes. Consider this jam the easiest way to get seasonal flavor into your holiday!
If you can’t wait for Shavuot, the jam is also excellent spread on toast, dolloped on oatmeal or pancakes, stirred into yogurt or cottage cheese, or paired with sharp cheese. After the cherries are pitted, all it takes is 20 minutes on the stove and you can enjoy spring straight from the spoon.
Canned/Bottled Cherries vs. Frozen Cherries
Cooking with fresh cherries from the farmer’s market or supermarket is ideal, but cherry season is fleeting. Off-season, there are two options: canned/bottled cherries and frozen cherries. And you better believe I have strong opinions about them:
Frozen Cherries: YES
Like other frozen fruits, frozen cherries are picked when ripe and then simply frozen, which keeps their flavor intact and vibrant. Freezing cherries does make them a bit squishier once thawed, but if you are going to be baking with them or cooking them into a sauce (like the recipe below), the texture difference is not noticeable.
I like to pit a bunch of fresh cherries as soon as I buy them and store them in quart containers in the freezer for later use. (This cherry and olive pitter makes quick work of the task.) Buying frozen whole cherries at the supermarket is also a good way to go during the off-season.
Canned/Bottled Cherries: HARD NO
Canned and bottled cherries tend to be suck all of the life out of cherries. Many of them contain citric acid or other preservatives that turn the cherries into bland, lifeless ghosts of their fresh selves. Even the best-quality brands fall flat when it comes to flavor. If there is a magical brand where the cherries still retain their essence, please let me know about it! But I have never found one. If you can’t source fresh or frozen cherries for a recipe, I think it is better to wait than to cook with them and be disappointed.
Sweet Cherry Quick Jam
Makes about 1 cup (290 g)
Please note: Next week’s newsletter, which will include a Shavuot-friendly recipe, will go out to all subscribers. But this week’s recipe for Sweet Cherry Quick Jam (plus a bonus recipe for my favorite cheesecake!) is for paid subscribers only. Update here to a paid subscription to access them, and never miss a future recipe or a story!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Jewish Table to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.