Category Archives: cherries

Roasted Jalapeños With Goat Cheese & Smoky Chile Cherries

31 December 2013 by local kitchen

My New Year’s gift to you: an actual “quick & easy” recipe that is spicy, sweet, creamy, smoky & delicious. Suitable for a rollickin’ holiday party or a quiet nibble at home and easily adaptable to cheeses you have in the fridge and preserves in the pantry. Roasting the jalapeños mellows their spicy bite (or you can include a mix of milder small chiles, as I have below), while a short roast and quick broil browns the cheese while maintaining […]

Categories: appetizer, cherries, fall, holiday, hot chile peppers, winter • Tags: cooking, food, local, quick & easy, vegetarian

Sweet Cherry, Rhubarb & Meyer Lemon Pie (with a lattice top)

30 August 2013 by local kitchen

“Grief,” I said to my good friend Karen, “makes people crazy.” That was back in December, when Karen’s Mom had just passed away, and as she had been for many years the charismatic matriarch of a large Irish clan, friends, relatives and neighbors were pouring in from all over the country for the wake and funeral services. And, inevitably, making crazy demands, asking inappropriate questions, offering unsolicited advice. Why? Because grief makes people crazy. It’s a horrible thing, grief: it […]

Categories: baking, cherries, dessert, pastry, pie, rhubarb, spring, summer, year round • Tags: cooking, dessert, food, local, pie, recipes

Cherry Key Lime Marmalade

7 August 2013 by local kitchen

Does anyone still have cherries? No? Me neither. Maybe Newfoundland? Or wait: my homies in Saskatchewan, this one’s for you! I’m late with cherries this year: as usual. Seems to be a recurring theme. (Another recurring theme? I think I’m going to miss blueberries this year. AGAIN. Sigh.) In happy news, Fishkill Farms finally had a productive cherry season: we’ve only been waiting four years. In unhappy news, they were charging $7/lb: for pick-your-own. And while I had lots of […]

Categories: canning, cherries, citrus, preserves, preserving, summer, year round • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, preserving, recipes, summer

Use It or Lose It! Drunken Cherry Chicken

20 March 2013 by local kitchen

In addition to my main stores in the garage pantry, I keep a small stash of jarred goods in a corner of one of my way-too-deep and inconveniently-high kitchen cabinets (the extra-convenient one above the fridge). I was pawing through the jars the other day (balanced precariously on the invaluable kitchen step stool), hoping I could avoid a snowy trip downstairs to pick up a jar of salsa, when I unearthed a dusty jar of drunken cherries: from 2009. Oops. […]

Categories: braising, cherries, chicken, main course, Use it or Lose it!, wine, beer & liquor, winter • Tags: cherries, chicken, cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes

Drink Week: Chellinis

28 July 2012 by local kitchen

Ages ago, I said I would participate in Drink Week, Marisa’s gathering of adventurous DIYers who don’t balk at a tipple or two with their preservy creations. I had grand plans: a local white wine sangria, with seasonal, local fruit; an herby-infused vodka, to go into a sophisticated, cucumber-and-something cocktail; or maybe something with foraged wild wineberries and local Tuthilltown whiskey. Alas, life happened, as it so often does: work appeared, in hunched-over-the-computer-’til-10 pm amounts; friends visited, birthdays popped up, […]

Categories: cherries, wine, beer & liquor • Tags: cocktails, drinks, food, local, quick & easy, recipes

Heatwave Preserving: Crock-Pot Cherry Butter

30 June 2012 by local kitchen

The heat is upon us again, my friends: it’s 90 degrees in my neck of the woods this afternoon and it was 94 yesterday. Not nearly as drastic as most of the rest of the country (nor as frightening as the conditions in Colorado right now) but still: hot. Last week, in the midst of a few back-to-back 96-degree days, I brought home a boatload of sweet cherries, following a lovely, lazy afternoon visit with Julia, her son splashing in the […]

Categories: canning, cherries, preserving, spreads, summer • Tags: canning, cherries, cooking, food, local, preserving, recipes

Smoky Chipotle Cherries

26 June 2012 by local kitchen

Cherry season is upon us, coming and going fast & furious like nearly every other fruit in the short Northeast summer. And while cherries did not fare well in the Hudson Valley this year (again!), due to a warmer-than-seasonal March, followed by freezing temps and lots of rain in April, there are some out there to be found. Belltown Orchards in Glastonbury, CT is open for you-pick of both sweet & sour cherries (assuming they still have some left); I’ve […]

Categories: canning, cherries, hot chile peppers, preserves, preserving, summer, wine, beer & liquor • Tags: canning, cherries, cooking, food, local, preserving, recipes

Rhubarb Cherry Ginger Crumble (Gluten-Free)

4 June 2012 by local kitchen

So, you know what happens now, right? Twenty-five pounds of rhubarb from Grandma’s garden that I need to work my way through means all rhubarb, all the time for the next 10 posts. I’m contemplating changing the blog name to Rhubarb Kitchen. I jest, I jest. Mostly. I know that some of you out there are not so fond of the pink stalks (perish the thought), so I will try not to deluge you with too many rhubarb recipes in a row. […]

Categories: baking, cherries, dessert, oats, rhubarb, spring, wine, beer & liquor • Tags: baking, cherries, cooking, dessert, food, gluten free, local, quick & easy, recipes, rhubarb

10-Minute Sour Cherry Bam!

31 July 2011 by local kitchen

You would think I would learn. (You would be wrong.) After my last run-in with shriveled fingertip sour cherries, I decided to make another attempt at cherry jam, this time just a straight-up sour cherry (a little bit of lemon, a little bit of sugar) and a minimal maceration, overnight, banking on the fact that it was the week-long maceration that caused the color-leach in my last sour cherry preserving attempt. Well, don’t take that piece of preserving wisdom to […]

Categories: 100% local, cherries, jams, preserves, preserving, quick & easy, summer • Tags: cherries, condiments, cooking, food, local, preserving, quick & easy, recipes

Sour Cherry, Balsamic and Vanilla: Syrup & Leather

18 July 2011 by local kitchen

The all-too-short cherry season was even shorter in the Hudson Valley this year: many farms lost most, if not all, of their entire crop due to a rainy Spring preventing pollination (bees do not buzz about doing their pollinating duties in the rain), and causing fruit to drop and split. I managed to squeeze some cherry picking into a busy 4th of July weekend but I traveled far afield to do so, to Belltown Hill Orchards in Glastonbury, CT (thanks to @fixmeasnack on […]

Categories: cherries, drying, preserving, snack, summer • Tags: cooking, food, local, preserving, quick & easy, recipes, summer

Use it or Lose it! Drunken Cherry Pie

30 November 2010 by local kitchen

Hands up – who still has turkey? Yep, I’m with you, sista. Even though we got a small bird (11.5 lbs), and we’ve been eating turkey steadily since Thursday, there is a lot left. We don’t eat a lot of meat in general, so at 3 to 4 ounces at a time… well, it’s going to take a while. I’m going to have to make a turkey soup, or chili, or pot pie, or something (I know – shocking revelations at […]

Categories: baking, cherries, dessert, fall, pastry, pie, Use it or Lose it!, vegetarian, whole wheat flour, wine, beer & liquor, year round • Tags: baking, cherries, cooking, dessert, drunken, food, leaf lattice, local, pie, recipes, vegetarian

Sour Cherry & Almond Preserves

8 July 2010 by local kitchen

I got up at 6:30 am on Tuesday morning, when it was a mere 84 degrees outside, in order to make cherry preserves before the thermometer hit triple digits again. Why, you ask, am I making jam during a heat wave? Is it self-reliance or self-flaggelation? Is it a New England Yankee refusal-to-let-adversity-bring-me-down attitude or a belligerent New Yorker screw-you-weather-you’re-not-the-boss-of-me? Is it so that I can don my holier-than-thou, local-organic-sustainable hairshirt and proudly proclaim “I made jam during the Great Heatwave of […]

Categories: breakfast, canning, cherries, dessert, nuts, preserves, preserving, summer • Tags: canning, cherries, cooking, food, local, recipes

Can Jam: Black Cherry, Rhubarb & Red Wine Preserves

24 June 2010 by local kitchen

You might think I’m stuck in a can-jammin’ rut: last month, strawberry, rhubarb & Amaretto sauce. This month, swap sweet black cherries for the strawberries, red wine for the Amaretto, and Bob’s your uncle, it’s practically the same recipe. Except it’s oh so not. When I think of preserves, this recipe is exactly what comes to mind: chunks of fruit, just barely broken down by a quick-as-you-can boil, suspended in a thick, syrupy glaze that is not stiff enough to […]

Categories: Can Jam, canning, cherries, dessert, jams, preserving, rhubarb, spring, summer, wine, beer & liquor • Tags: canning, cooking, food, preserving, recipes

Quadruple C Cookies

4 May 2010 by local kitchen

Chocolate, cherries, cashews, coconut. Yum. I’ve been tweaking my chocolate chip cookie recipe for a while, trying to achieve the ultimate combination of texture (crispy outside, soft, chewy inside), sweetness (enough to satisfy the sweet craving, but not so much that you actually taste the sugar) and a good balance of flavors for all of the stuff that I can cram into a cookie. In this batch I eliminated granulated sugar altogether and repaced it with brown sugar; I also dialed back on the amount […]

Categories: baking, cherries, chocolate, dessert, quick & easy, snack, whole wheat flour, year round • Tags: baking, cherries, chocolate, cookies, cooking, dessert, food, local, recipes, whole grain

Drunken Cherry & Apple Pie

26 November 2009 by local kitchen

My contribution to the Thanksgiving table: preserved sweet cherries from the summer’s harvest, hand-picked, organically-grown Mutsu and IdaRed apples from Fishkill Farms, and flaky, tender pastry crust. Happy Thanksgiving! Adapted from The Best All-American Apple Pie in The Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum ————————————————————– Drunken Cherry & Apple Pie INGREDIENTS double recipe of Rose’s Flaky Cream Cheese Pie Crust (see Options for the cream cheese variation) 2 and 1/2 lbs baking apples 1 and 1/2 tbsp lemon juice 1 tsp lemon […]

Categories: apples, baking, cherries, dessert, fall, pastry, pie, whole wheat flour, winter • Tags: baking, cooking, dessert, food, local, recipes