Peach Saffron Jam

Peaches are so cloying that I look for ways to make them more tragic. Preserve some of their Doris Day countenance but reduce the sweetness in favor of an earthier character. This jam does just that. It’s another inspiration from my new go-to guy Paul Virant and his excellent book The Preservation Kitchen. He says that, “The saffron turns simple sweet peaches into something quite different – earthy, musky, savory.”  Definitely. Like many of Virant’s concoctions, this is intended to be used as an ingredient or an accompaniment to savory dishes rather than simply adorn a piece of breakfast toast or fill a thumbprint cookie. Although my non-sweet tooth might just like it on toast, I am whisking it into vinaigrette to serve over colorful tomatoes.

I added a little salt to Virant’s recipe since the jam seemed a little flat. Next time I will increase the sugar just a tad, or use small yellow peaches instead of the giant ones I bought at our local orchard. I’m writing the recipe the way I think it would be improved.

Peach Saffron Jam adapted from Paul Virant, The Preservation Kitchen

5 large or 8 small peaches (2½ lb measured after pitting, 6 c cubed)

Juice of 1 lemon

1 c granulated sugar

1½ tsp saffron

Big pinch of salt

Peel the peaches by plunging them first into boiling water for a few seconds and then into ice water. The skins will slip off easily. Chop the peaches, dropping them into a large saucepan in which you’ve placed the lemon juice. Add the sugar, saffron and salt and bring the mixture to a boil over high heat. Lower the heat to medium and cook the peaches until they have rendered their juice, about 10 minutes. Cool, cover with crumpled parchment paper and refrigerate overnight.

Prepare the kettle, jars and lids for water bath canning.

Bring the peach mixture to a boil, reduce the heat until medium, and cook until thick, 10-12 minutes. Spoon the jam into the prepared jars.

Process the jars for 10 minutes after the water returns to a boil. Turn off the heat, remove the lid and let sit for 5 minutes before moving the jars to a counter to sit undisturbed until cool.

Makes 5 four-ounce jars.

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Fanny’s Peach Jam

Another in a series in which I comment on M.F.K. Fisher’s 1986 annotations of Catherine Plagemann’s 1967 Fine Preserving, layering past and present, research, experimentation and outright opinion. This project is a blast.

 “Peach jam is always good…unless there is our family jar of Emily’s marmalade to hand,” writes M.F.K. Fisher in the margins of a Catherine Plagemann recipe called “Fanny’s Peach Jam.” There’s something charmingly nostalgic about naming jams after the people who make them over and over. They conjure up stories, true or not.  You could say Fisher’s wry remark was a bit of one-upmanship but maybe it was simply an association with a world of caring housekeepers. Of course, I’m making a leap to say that Edith was a housekeeper only because Plagemann tells us a little about Fanny Gerlach, who had worked with her cousin’s family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania for 48 years, taking care of scores of people over several generations. “There are some people who are so remarkable that the world wouldn’t spin the same if they weren’t right where they are, and Fanny is one of them,” writes Plagemann.

 Plagemann explains that Fanny made the jams and jellies that were best liked by the family, and declares that, “This is one of these recipes – one of the few peach preserves that has any character.” And it does have character, contributed by the chopped navel oranges and lemon that are suspended within a light, peachy base. I used cara cara oranges because of their color and gentle flavor, pretty and not overwhelming for the peaches. Since the citrus would have enough pectin to set the jam, I took the liberty to reduce the sugar from 100% to 75% of the volume of fruit. It could go even lower with the addition of more lemon juice and a packet of citrus seeds inserted in the fruit and sugar mixture while it macerates overnight. A cross between marmalade and jam, it could also use a little oomph from the addition of lemon juice, or even the use of a whole lemon instead of a half. Nonetheless, this recipe’s a keeper.

Fanny’s Peach Jam, adapted from Catherine Plagemann’s Fine Preserving

6 yellow peaches, peeled, halved and pitted

2 navel oranges, quartered but not peeled

½ lemon, halved but not peeled

Sugar

Coarsely chop the orange and lemon in a food processor and add the peaches, chopping the entire mixture into a medium grind. Measure the fruit and add sugar equal to 75% of the volume of fruit (e.g., for 6 cups of fruit, add 4 cups of sugar, which is the volume I achieved.) Stir well, cover and refrigerate overnight. The next morning, boil the fruit until it sets a gel tested on a saucer placed in the freezer, about 12 minutes, or cook it longer, up to 20 minutes as Plagemann did, to achieve a dark jam. Take care to stir it constantly as peaches have a tendency to burn.

Process for 10 minutes using a water bath canning method. This recipe made 7 eight-ounce jars.

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Blackberry Peach Jam

High summer fruit season – with plentiful berries and stone fruit – is a paradise for making jam. I had been thinking of the delectable combination of peaches and raspberries, so-called peach melba, but with our weekly CSA harvest of a quart of organic blackberries, I struck out in a slightly different direction. Red raspberries would have added a light fruity touch to the peaches, like red currants do with apricots. But blackberries, like black currants, have an earthy depth. Would the peaches be overwhelmed? As it turned out, the peaches add a spark to the blackberries, partly because I left them chunky. The deep rich color and flavor of this jam was quite appealing. 

I used the Christine Ferber method of making two jams and combining them at the end. She has a recipe for blackberry peach jam in her book Mes Confitures, but I objected to the volume of sugar, cutting it down considerably. I increased the amount of lemon, reserving the seeds and a piece of rind and adding them to the peaches to increase the pectin. The blackberries have plenty because they’re so seedy. I also cooked the blackberries longer than she did since I wanted to eke out as much of the juicy pulp as possible. And with the remaining blackberry mash, I made a small amount of blackberry vinegar.

Blackberry Peach Jam based on Christine Ferber’s method

For the blackberry jam:

1 qt blackberries (about 1½-2 lb)

2 c sugar

1 lemon, juiced, seeds reserved

For the peach jam:

2 lb peaches (6-8 medium)

1½ c sugar

1 lemon, juiced, seeds and half the rind reserved

Prepare the blackberries. Pick them over to remove any hard cores or leaves, and rinse them lightly. Place the blackberries, 2 c sugar and the juice of 1 lemon in a wide saucepan. Bring them to a simmer and cook for about 3 minutes, or until the juice renders and the pump is soft. Pour into a bowl, let cool, and refrigerate overnight, covered with crumpled parchment paper.

Prepare the peaches. Bring a pot of water to boil, place a bowl of ice water in the sink, and put the lemon juice in a wide saucepan that you’ll use for preserving.  Put the lemon seeds and rind in a small muslin or cheesecloth sack and add it to the lemon juice. Dunk the peaches, one or two at a time, in the boiling water and then plunge them into the ice water. Remove the skin and pit and cut them into rough chunks, dropping them into the lemon juice as you go. Add 1½ sugar and bring the peach mixture to a simmer. Pour into a bowl, let cook, and refrigerate overnight, covered with crumpled parchment paper.

Make the jams. If you’re planning to can the jam using a water bath method, prepare the canning kettle, jars and lids. Place a saucer in the freezer for testing the gel. Cook each jam separately, bringing the mixtures to a boil and cooking on high heat for about 5 minutes, or until gelled. Remove the sack of lemon seeds from the peach jam and combine the two into one pan. Bring to a boil and re-check the set. Pour into warm prepared jars.

Water bath canning.  Process the jars for 10 minutes after the water returns to a boil. Turn off the heat, remove the lid and let them sit for 5 minutes before removing them to a counter to sit undisturbed until cool.

Makes about 4 eight-oz jars or 8 four-ounce jars and a little extra.

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Apricot-Currant Preserves

Red currants work magic with other seasonal fruit in the preserving pan. Those tiny translucent red orbs impart a rosy hue and tart flavor to their companion fruit. And they add natural pectin that gels the fruit into jam and preserves without overcooking. Not to mention their nutritional value. Seasonally, red currants overlap strawberries waning in late June and apricots emerging in July. And since they’re sold locally only in tiny amounts, I use them as additives to other dishes. Someday, I’ll get my own bush.

Meanwhile, I was really fortunate to obtain a second week’s worth of fresh local apricots. While these were from the same tree, they weren’t the same variety according to the farmer, since they were propagated by grafting. They were smaller, rosier, and firmer than the previous week’s haul, so instead of reducing them to a puree, I decided to leave the quarters whole, suspending them in clear rosy jelly aided by the addition of the red currants.

The technique is the same as for the apricot-vanilla jam that I recently made, up to the point of final cooking. Instead of boiling the fruit in its liquid, I drained the liquid into a wide saucepan and cooked it to a gel, then added the quartered apricots and cooked them for a short time, again until tested for gel.  This is another classic technique from Christine Ferber and here it produced a jewel-like preserve with a stunning red-orange color.

Apricot-Currant Preserves

2 lb fresh apricots, slightly under-ripe and firm

2 c sugar

½ c water

¼ pt red currants (1 c)

1 c water

Rinse and dry the apricots. Quarter them lengthwise, removing the pits. (You can crack open the pits to reveal a flavorful kernel that you can use for another purpose, or discard them.) Combine the apricots, sugar and ½ cup of water in a bowl, stir well, and let the apricots macerate for an hour, stirring occasionally to make sure that the sugar is dissolving.

Meanwhile, remove the currants from their stems and place in a small saucepan with 1 cup of water and bring to a boil, cooking until the currants pop, about 3-4 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside to cool for about an hour, or until the end of the time when the apricots are macerating.  Push the currants and their liquid through a sieve set over a large saucepan, to remove the seeds, pressing down to eke out the precious liquid.

Add the apricots and their liquid to the saucepan containing the currants and bring the mixtures just to a bare simmer and pour the mixture back into the apricot bowl. Let cool, cover with crinkled parchment paper and refrigerate overnight.

When ready to make the preserves, prepare the canner, jars and lids if you’re going to process them via water bath. Place a saucer into the freezer for testing the gel.

Drain the apricot-currant liquid into a large, wide saucepan, reserving the apricots. Bring the liquid to a boil and cook until the temperature approaches 220 degrees on a candy thermometer and/or the liquid tests for gel when a drop is placed on the frozen saucer. Do not overcook. (The currant liquid contains plenty of pectin so this sets up in around 6 minutes. Apricots foam a lot so you can add a dab of butter to the pot to control that, or plan on skimming the finished preserves before jarring them.)

Add the reserved apricot quarters to the saucepan, stir well, and boil for 4-5 minutes until the liquid once again passes the gel test.

Ladle into hot prepared jars and cap them. Process in a water bath for 10 minutes after the water returns to a boil. Turn off the heat, remove the canner lid and let sit for 5 minutes before moving them to sit on a counter, undisturbed, until cool.

Makes 3-4 eight-ounce jars or 6-7 four-ounce jars. (I made 3 large and 1 small jar. I preferred the larger size because the fruit remains whole and floats suspended in the clear liquid. )

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Filmishmish! Apricot-Vanilla Jam with Apricot Kernels

You think we’re getting apricots this year? Filmishmish! “In apricot season!” As they say in Egypt, slang for “wishful thinking.” Dream on. Thank you, I will. Of course we’re going to get apricots in apricot season, at least locally, if we get them at all. Our season is so fleeting that you might miss an entire year by not haunting the right farmers’ market one week. The farmer who sold me this year’s supply had none last year. Squirrels absconded with them all before he could pick them from the tree.  So, as I do with local cherries in June, I sleuth for apricots in July to put up for the pantry.

Plain apricot jam is very useful in cooking since it acts as a base for glazes applied to sweet and savory dishes. However, I tend to preserve so little that I make specialty jams, like the hauntingly aromatic and slightly mysterious Apricot-Lavender Jam of two years ago, or this delicious Apricot-Vanilla Jam, speckled with tiny black vanilla seeds. Or Apricot-Currant Jam that I recently made.

Just as with other stone fruit, especially cherry but also peaches, I crack open the hard pit to reveal a meaty little kernel that’s reminiscent of almonds. In fact, apricot kernels are the basis of the liqueur Amaretto, which comes from the Italian word for bitter, associated with bitter almonds and often thought of as an almond liqueur. The reason for this similarity is that many of these fruits, and some that we call nuts (almonds, walnuts for example) are “drupes” botanically speaking. They consist of a fleshy outer body surrounding a hard shell, inside of which is the kernel. To free the kernel, you need to crack the hard shell, which I do by covering the nuts with cloth and tapping them strategically with a hammer. You don’t want the hard shell shards to fly and you don’t want to pulverize the kernels. The kernels, like unblanched almonds, have a papery brown skin, which is removed by pouring boiling water over them (i.e., blanching them), and then slipping the skin off.

For this jam, much like the sour cherry jam that I made in June, I buried a little muslin bag of lemon seeds, lemon peel and apricot kernels in the apricots first as they macerate and then as they cook. This boosts the pectin that creates gel, allowing you to cook the jam for a little less time than otherwise.  

I chopped the almond kernels to a fine dice and added a few to some of the jars just before canning.  I also “recycled” the vanilla beans by immersing them with their cousins into a jar of sugar. 

Apricot-Vanilla Jam

2 lb fresh apricots

2 c sugar

½ c water

Juice of 1/2 lemon, pits and peel reserved

2 vanilla beans, split lengthwise

Rinse and dry the apricots. Quarter them lengthwise, removing the pits. (You can crack open the pits to reveal a flavorful kernel that you can use in this jam, or for another purpose, or discard them. If using them, douse them with boiling water to release the white kernel from its bitter brown skin.) Tie the reserved lemon seeds, peel from about half the lemon and the apricot kernels, if using, into a muslin sack. The lemon pits and peel will release their pectin into the fruit to help the jam gel.

Combine all ingredients, including the sack of seeds, in a bowl and stir well. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla beans. Let the apricots macerate at room temperature for an hour, stirring occasionally to make sure that the sugar is dissolving.

Add the apricots and their liquid to a saucepan and bring just to a bare simmer.  Pour the mixture back into the apricot bowl. Let cool, cover with crinkled parchment paper and refrigerate overnight.

When ready to make the preserves, prepare the canner, jars and lids if you’re going to process them via water bath. Place a saucer into the freezer for testing the gel.

Place the apricot mixture into a wide saucepan, bring to a boil and cook until the temperature approaches 220 degrees on a candy thermometer and/or the liquid tests for gel when a drop is placed on the frozen saucer. Do not overcook. Apricots foam a lot so you can add a dab of butter to the pot to control that, or plan on skimming the finished preserves before jarring them. Remove the vanilla bean and sack of seeds. Depending on the firmness of the apricots, the mixture might be smooth or chunky. If you want a smooth jam, use an immersion blender or whisk to break up any chunks.

If you are adding apricot kernels, cut them into tiny pieces and add them to the jam. (I added them only to a couple of jars.)

Ladle into hot prepared jars and cap them. Process in a water bath for 10 minutes after the water returns to a boil. Turn off the heat, remove the canner lid and let sit for 5 minutes

Makes 4 eight-ounce jars or 8 four-ounce jars.

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Cherry Bread Pudding Never Goes A-Beggin’

Don’t put that cherry pitter away just yet. Or throw out that stale loaf of bread. Here is a top find for what I call an amiable summer cake. I’ve been on the hunt for a simple cake made with cherries and was ready to pounce on a Hungarian Sour Cherry Cake featured in Saveur a few years ago, when New York Times columnist Martha Rose Shulman (“Recipes for Health”) came to the rescue. She adapted the recipe from a richer version devised by the famed French pastry chef Jacquy Pfeiffer, who runs the French Pastry School in Chicago. It is brilliant and delicious.

You can tell that Chef Pfeiffer is steeped in the tradition of using everything up, down to the last breadcrumb. This, however, is not your standard bread pudding. It hails from Alsace and is known as a “bettelmann,” which means “beggar” in German. I guess because beggars in Alsace ask for and are given yesterday’s spare bread (as opposed to today’s spare change). This is a charming allusion to remember in my waste-not-want-not view of the world of the kitchen and pantry.

This recipe is similar to a chocolate bread pudding that I made last year in that the bread is literally dissolved and you would never perceive it as an ingredient. I wasn’t sure about that at the time but now I’m convinced. The bread soaks in milk for hours, or overnight, and is beaten to a mush along with honey, almond flour, cinnamon, egg yolks and, Shulman suggests, a little kirsch. I had none but I did add a teaspoon of Amaretto left over from an aborted jam experiment. The second brilliant move in the recipe was to make a meringue from the egg whites, and fold it into the bread mixture. The entire batter is then poured over pitted cherries placed in the bottom of a baking dish and topped with toasted almond pieces. I used slivered, Shulman used sliced.  This looks like a light batter compared to my standard bread pudding where the cubes of bread remain visible. I am really impressed with the excellent new methods this recipe has taught me. 

Cherry “Bettelmann” Bread Pudding adapted from Martha Rose Shulman, NYT Recipes for Health

4 oz stale white or whole wheat bread, crusts removed (measure after removing crusts)

1 c low-fat milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 pt (about ¾ lb) sweet cherries

Butter

3 eggs, separated (room temperature)

½ c almond flour

½ tsp ground cinnamon

2 tbsp light-flavored honey

1 tsp kirsch or Amaretto (optional)

¼ c granulated white sugar

2 tbsp toasted slivered or sliced almonds

Cut the bread into ¾-inch cubes. Combine the milk and vanilla extract and pour over the bread, mixing well. Set aside in the refrigerator several hours or overnight.

Heat the oven to 375 degrees.

Wash and pit the cherries and place them in the bottom of a buttered 2-quart baking dish (I used a 7×11-inch glass pan.)

Remove the milk and bread mixture from the refrigerator.  (It would be helpful to let is swarm to room temperature before proceeding.) With a hand mixer, immersion blender or a whisk, beat the bread and milk mixture until smooth. Add the egg yolks, almond flour, cinnamon, honey and kirsch or Amaretto if using. Mix well.

In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites (using clean beaters) at low speed until frothy. Increase the speed to high and gradually add the sugar, beating until a soft meringue (soft peaks) forms.

Fold a small amount of the meringue into the bread mixture to lighten it, and then fold in the rest. The mixture will resemble a light batter. Pour gently over the cherries and smooth the surface. Sprinkle with the toasted almonds.

Bake 35-40 minutes or until light brown. You can test it with cake tester or trussing needle.

Serve warm or at room temperature.  Serves 6-8.

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Pickled Sweet Cherries with Tarragon

I knew this would be brilliant. Tarragon was my go-to herb all spring, partly because my pot-full has been vigorous. My yearly batch of tarragon vinegar is coming up soon, but in the meanwhile, I’ve been making fruit vinegars, like cherry.  Having pickled sour cherries a few weeks ago, I moved onto sweet cherries last weekend courtesy of a find at the farmers market.  Unlike the pickled sour cherries, which last for months, the sweet cherries may be short-lived, even when stored in the refrigerator. (Of course they’re so delicious, they wouldn’t last that long in any event.) Unlike the recently pickled sour cherries, which take some time to cure, the sweet cherries are ready in a week.  I had a few ideas on how to pickle these based on my previous experiments, but opted to follow Thomas Keller’s method from Ad Hoc at Home. There’s glitch in his recipe, so I followed my instincts.

Pickled Sweet Cherries with Tarragon adapted from Thomas Keller Ad Hoc at Home

1 lb sweet cherries (enough to fit in a pint jar without packing them down)

1 four-inch sprig of tarragon cut in half

2/3 c water

1/3 c balsamic vinegar (or cherry-balsamic vinegar)

1/3 c granulated sugar

15 black peppercorns

Wash and dry the cherries, trim the stems to ¾ inch and place the fruit in a clean pint jar with the tarragon. Bring the remaining ingredients just to a boil in a small saucepan and set aside to cool slightly. While still warm, pour over the cherries and let them cool completely before capping and storing in the refrigerator. Make sure the fruit and tarragon are fully submerged.  The cherries will be ready in about a week.  Makes 1 pint.

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Potted Rainier Cherries with Vanilla and Rum

The gorgeous Rainier Cherries that I picked last weekend at a local orchard begged for a light treatment.  Their blushing yellow complexion and sweet, succulent flesh did not deserve to be cooked into pickles or jam that would just turn them brown and ordinary.  As ordinary as cherries ever are! They’ll oxidize no matter what, but I thought that a simple poaching would be the best course to maintain their integrity.  I can’t say that these are actually poached since I didn’t cook the cherries, but rather poured warm liquid over them and let them cure in the refrigerator for a few days.

Picking up on a preparation of Thomas Keller’s in Ad Hoc at Home (a very practical, down-to-earth volume, by the way, from a chef known as a virtuoso), I burned the alcohol off a jigger of rum, and added it to simple syrup (sugar and water) with vanilla beans. Lightly cooled and poured over the cherries, the syrup was as delicious as the fruit, which we served as a lightly chilled compote.  It keeps for a few weeks, but any cherries that are not fully immersed will turn brown.

This would ordinarily seem to be an extravagant use of vanilla beans, but I just received an annual bulk order since it’s coming up on the time to make homemade vanilla extract so that I’ll be ready for the fall and winter holidays.  Don’t discard the beans when you’re finished with the cherries.  At the least, they can be inserted into a jar of sugar to flavor it.

Potted Rainier Cherries with Vanilla and Rum adapted from Thomas Keller

1 lb Rainier cherries, with stems

1/3 c light rum

1 c water

1 c sugar

2 vanilla beans

Wash the cherries and cut the stems to ¾ inch long. Place the cherries loosely in a jar, taking care not to press them down.

Heat the rum in a medium saucepan and light it with a match, allowing the alcohol to burn off slightly. Add the water and sugar.

Cut the vanilla beans in half crosswise, and then split them lengthwise, scraping the seeds into the liquid and sugar mixture and adding the pods.

Bring to a simmer and cook for two minutes. Remove from the heat and let the mixture steep for 30 minutes.

Remove the vanilla beans and add them to the cherries. Pour the liquid over the over the prepared cherries, cap the jar, let it cool and refrigerate. Use within two weeks or so.

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Preserved Spiced Cherries

Another in a series in which I comment on M.F.K. Fisher’s 1986 annotations of Catherine Plagemann’s 1967 Fine Preserving, layering past and present, research, experimentation and outright opinion. This project is a blast.

This was last year’s prize sweet cherry discovery and I’m surprised that M.F.K. Fisher didn’t pick up on it when she annotated Ms. Plagemann’s delightful volume. Taking the author’s advice, I waited several months before cracking open a jar, so of course it would be a whole year before I could make it again and would want to write about it. Every time I serve the cherries, my husband comments on how exceptionally good they are. And he’s right. 

 Strong and syrupy, the cherries have a lingering taste from the addition of cider vinegar and the spices – cinnamon, allspice and cloves. The most interesting characteristic is the plumpness of the whole cherries after they’re canned.  It’s partly because I used large sweet cherries and partly because the ridiculous amount of sugar, coupled with the cherry juice and vinegar, produces a gel in 5-10 minutes, if that.  Therefore they don’t get overcooked. 

Plagemann thought of this as jam, but it’s a little loose for that. We spooned it over ice cream and sorbet and served it with crepes and pancakes. I bet the cherries would make a swell topping for a custard tartlet. I’ll let you know next year.

Spiced Cherries adapted from Catherine Plagemann, Fine Preserving

2 lbs sweet dark red cherries (5-6 c pitted)

4 c granulated cane sugar

1 c cider vinegar

½ tsp ground cinnamon

¼ tsp ground allspice

¼ tsp ground cloves

Prepare 6-7 eight-ounce jars for canning.  Place a saucer in the freezer for testing the gel.

Wash and pit the cherries, leaving them as whole as possible.

Place the remaining ingredients in a large wide saucepan and bring just to a boil over medium-high heat. Add the cherries and stir. Cook the cherries at a medium boil until the liquid tests for gel, about 5-7 minutes.

Divide the cherries among the prepared canning jars and pour in the liquid. (I made 2 jars of just syrup.) Carefully insert a spoon handle or similar object in the jars to release any air bubbles without breaking the cherries. Process the jars in a water bath canner for 10 minutes after the water comes to a boil. Turn off the heat, remove the canner lid and let sit for 5 minutes before removing to a counter to cool undisturbed.

Makes approximately 5-6 eight-ounce jars.

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Preserving the Cherry Harvest: Cherry Vinegar Two Ways

Continuing a series of recipes for stocking your pantry full of cherries at the peak of the season…

Reflections of three jewels in light bouncing around the kitchen in late afternoon make me smile. We have what I call “ghosts” in the house: reflections and shadows, mysterious shimmering light and ephemeral forms that appear from the darkness, observed and also sometimes captured on camera. I collect them, though rarely share. But here, among the most obvious and lucid was a simple bounce of light from the west kitchen window to the stainless steel refrigerator door to the counter where I had lined up my three most recent vinegars: chive blossom, the most fragile color of the group, violet, and the nearly opaque cherry. Their color and luminosity align with characteristic flavors.  I’ve posted chive blossom vinegar and violet vinegar before, and here, in anticipation of a full-blown cherry harvest, are my most recent two attempts at cherry vinegar from last season. (I have already said that the curing takes so long and the season is so short that I don’t think it’s fair to post these ideas out of reach.)

 Last year, I observed that, throughout the fall and winter, I added dried cherries to salads, pilafs and even to poultry, and I found myself spooning syrup from slightly sweet pickled cherries onto salads. So, I thought, why not make cherry vinegar?  Thomas Keller, in Ad Hoc at Home, writes about steeping cherry pits in balsamic vinegar. He uses it to make potted cherries with tarragon, which I am planning on doing this year. The Thomas Keller vinegar does have lingering cherry flavors but is pretty subtle. It makes a good addition to pickled cherries, though, and I like the “waste not want not” bonus. But it lacked the robustness of pure cherries that I craved.

The other cherry vinegar – inspired by the She Simmers blog that expounds on Thai cuisine and customs — is simply great and greatly simple. You grind up pitted cherries and combine them with white balsamic vinegar (they foam, don’t worry) and let them steep. I decanted some after the ten days that She suggests, but I let most of my batch cure for longer (months) with no adverse effect. In fact, I rather liked having some of the ground up cherries to combine with other things, including adding them into salads where the vinegar is part of the dressing.

Cherry vinegar is versatile and has become a favorite in my household. I particularly like the combination of cherry vinegar and walnut oil (and a splash of light olive oil to temper), tossed with newly picked lettuces, toasted walnuts, diced steamed beets and feta cheese. I added a splash of walnut oil to the walnuts as they finished browning in a dry pan over low heat, which somehow both freshened them and added a depth of flavor.

Cherry Pit Vinegar from Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home

¾ c Balsamic vinegar

Pits from 1 lb cherries

Bring the Balsamic vinegar to a boil and pour over the cherry pits. Let them steep for at least an hour before decanting the vinegar.

Cherry Vinegar adapted from the She Simmers blog

2 cups white Balsamic vinegar (basically a 17 oz bottle)

1 lb Bing cherries, pitted (yielding 2 c)

Warm the vinegar just to the simmering point, not letting it boil (which would dissipate the acidity). Let it cool 10 minutes.

Place the pitted cherries in the bowl of a food processor and grind them fine. Add half the vinegar and process until the mixture is smooth (it will be slightly foamy). Pour into a clean jar with a tight lid. Add the rest of the vinegar, cap it and shake it to combine. Store in the refrigerator for two weeks, shaking it every day. Decant the vinegar (then or later) through muslin or multiple layers of cheesecloth and finally through a coffee filter until it is completely clear.

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