About Me
I'm a Melbourne boy, hailing from St Kilda with one ex, one current wife and four kids. Love the outdoors and making new discoveries. I cook a lot at home (cheers from wife) and do some preserving, mostly jams, pickles and fruit liqueurs. This is the diary of a cooking journey.

My Complete Profile

Recent Posts
Risk vs. Reward Reloaded
Words From The Grave
Nostalgia Event
Rabbit Ears
Spices
Barbecued Octopus
Mussels in Cider
Traveling Through Time
The Spice Is Right
Hanging Rock

Links
1001 Dinners 1001 Nights
A Few of My Favourite Things
Abstract Gourmet
Apellation Australia
Becks and Posh
BurgerMary ATX
Cook (almost) Anything at least once
Cooking Down Under
Cook sister!
Cooked And Bottled In Brunswick
David Lebovitz
Deep Dish Dreams
Chef Paz
Chubby Hubby
Eating Melbourne
Eating With Jack
essjay eats
Food Lover's Journey
Gosstronomy
Grab Your Fork
I Am Obsessed With Food
I Eat Therefore I Am
Iron Chef Shellie
Just Desserts
Kalyn's Kitchen
Kitchen Wench
Lobstersquad
Matt Bites
Melbourne Gastronome
My Kitchen in Half Cups
Nola Cuisine
Not Quite Nigella
Nourish Me
Seriously Good
Souvlaki For The Soul
Stone Soup
Sunnybrae
Syrup and Tang
Steve Don't Eat It!
That Jess Ho
The Elegant Sufficiency
The Perfect Pantry
The View From My Porch
Thyme for Cooking
Tomato
Tumeric & Saffron
tummy rumbles
What I Cooked Last Night
where's the beef
WhiteTrashBBQ
Vicious Ange

Food Blog Resources
Food Blog S'cool
I Eat I Drink I Work
Kiplog Food Links

Food for Thought
Autism Victoria
Autism Vox
forget me now
Lotus Martinis
MOM - Not Otherwise Specified
St Kilda Today

Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Sour Cherry Slice
I was chatting to a fellow blogger and asking if sour cherries would have been a viable substitute in a certain recipe and she replied that she felt sour cherries wouldn't have worked in her recipe and were best matched with chocolate.

Which got me thinking.

I completely understand matching sour cherries to chocolate. Two of my all time favourite cakes, sour cherry kugelhopf and the classic Black Forest cake both show off the wonderful marriage these two can make. For chocolate is such a bully really, pushing other less assertive ingredients to the background, that it needs a strong partner to pull it into line. But that's not all there is to sour cherries. Think of rhubarb for instance, which has about the same tartness. It is very often featured just on its own as the star ingredient and sour cherries are just as confident on their own and need just like rhubarb, a little sweetness added.

The reason I had asked about using sour cherries is that I had made for the first time a cherry clafoutis in which I used sweet cherries and was totally disappointed with its lack of cherry flavour, though I would say it was better cold than warm. I wondered then how it would have been if it contained sour cherries instead. The reason I was thinking this was that every year we go the a cherry orchard and buy many kilos of sour cherries for making various things, like sour cherry jam, cherry vodka and quite a few are simply bottled for cakes and desserts during the year.

Now the thing is every year we eat some fresh, to get an idea of how much flavour they have. Even though they are called sour cherries they are not sour like a lemon for instance, it would be fairer to say they are tart and something else is instantly obvious - the length and depth of flavour, its almost like essence of cherry. Some Europeans actually quite like to eat fresh sour cherries, but the majority of the crop will be preserved in some way. In fact it is European countries that lead world production of sour cherries and it would probably surprise you to learn that of the world-wide production of cherries, which is around three million tons, one third of that is dedicated to sour cherries.

Stephanie Alexander in her book the Cooks Companion goes on to say...

'Cherries are an ancient fruit and originated in south-eastern Europe and western Asia. There are still many cherry recipes that are closely linked to these areas, especially from Russia, Hungary, Turkey and Germany, the latter of which is home to the fabulous Black Forest cake. Kirsch and many other cherry liqueurs are also produced in central and eastern Europe. European cherry recipes are all intended for the sour cherry, which develops far greater complexity and depth of flavour than a sweet cherry when cooked. Inevitably, sweet cherries will have to be substituted most of the time.'


Well, perhaps it's not inevitable if you have a source for sour cherries, as even supermarkets carry jars of sour cherries these days, usually labeled as Morello cherries, which can be used in place of fresh cherries when they are no longer in season. If you like rhubarb you will certainly like this slice, which is my entry to Weekend Herb Blogging, this week hosted by the wonderful originator, Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen.


DOROTA’S SOUR CHERRY SLICE


1 cup sugar
3 cups plain flour sifted
2 teaspoons baking powder
250 g butter
5 egg yolks
3 tablespoons sour cream
1 litre jar sour cherries

Topping

5 egg whites
1 cup icing sugar
4 rounded tablespoons vanilla custard powder



In a large bowl mix flour and baking powder, cut butter into small pieces and rub into flour with fingertips, until flour looks like coarse sand. Add sugar, sour cream and egg yolks, and mix until dough forms, do not over mix. Divide dough into ¾ and ¼ pieces, wrap in plastic. Put ¾ piece in fridge and ¼ piece in freezer for at least a ½ hour. In a baking dish 38 cm x 26 cm place ¾ piece of dough and with your hands, push the dough to cover the bottom of the dish. Drain sour cherries and put them on the dough.

Whisk eggwhites until soft peaks form, then slowly whisk in the icing sugar, then the custard powder. Pour this mixture over the sour cherries and level. Take ¼ piece of dough and grate evenly over topping. Bake in 170 c oven for 50 minutes.

Just in an aside, the leftover juice from the jar of sour cherries makes a refreshing drink, more so with a shot of vodka, a cook's bonus if you like.

Labels: ,

 
  posted at 8:15 am
  8 comments



8 Comments:
At 11:56 am, Blogger Kalyn Denny said...

Another thing I've never tasted! There do seem to be a lot of them lately. This sounds like it would taste fantastic. I wonder why I haven't seen these here, since cherries are a Utah crop? I'll have to check on that.

 
At 2:30 pm, Blogger MyKitchenInHalfCups said...

I would be willing to swear that when I made cherry clafoutis that I used sour cherries. I made it out of the Time Life Cooking in France. I just looked up the recipe and it calls for sweet cherries.
My experiences with fresh cherries is from the summers we spent on Lake Michigan. I always wanted to be there when the cherries, asparagus and blue berries came in-the best ever.

 
At 3:11 pm, Blogger neil said...

Hi kalyn, everyone who tries it asks for the recipe. If you have a cherry crop there ought to be someone with sour cherries, but I recall in the early days here they were very hard to get hold of until we found an orchard that grew them.

Hi tanna, if I ever make cherry clafoutis again, I will be using sour cherries. No surprise with the book either, I have several cookbooks by French authors and not one of them says to use sour cherries.

 
At 11:59 am, Blogger Anh said...

Neil, I haven't used sour cherries a lot. But I did use the dried sour cherries (which cost a fortune!) once to make jam, and it is beautiful. Your recipe sounds good, too.

 
At 12:17 pm, Blogger neil said...

Hi anh, I hear you, dried sour cherries do cost a bomb. I wonder how it would go if you found a jar of morellos and dried them out?

 
At 6:24 pm, Blogger Helene said...

I´m lucky to have a tree in my garden, so I´ll try your recipe later this summer. :)

 
At 5:08 pm, Blogger neil said...

Hi helene, my sister-in-law has a tree but not enough for us yet, but the orchard we go to has outstanding fruit. I'm sure you will like it.

 
At 12:01 pm, Blogger John said...

cheap air max
rolex watches
oakley sunglasses
michael kors outlet online sale
marc jacobs handbags
coach factory outlet
coach outlet
michael kors outlet
abercrombie and fitch
kate spade handbags
christian louboutin outlet
nike running shoes for women
ed hardy outlet
longchamp handbags
cheap nfl jerseys
toms shoes
oakley sunglasses wholesale
ugg outlet
oakley sunglasses
louis vuitton outlet
michael kors outlet
abercrombie & fitch new york
kobe shoes
louis vuitton outlet
louis vuitton
cheap jordan shoes
oakley sunglasses
air jordans
michael kors outlet
ugg boots
louis vuitton outlet stores
vans sneakers
hollister kids
toms wedges
abercrombie outlet
fitflop clearance
nfl jerseys wholesale
tod's shoes
2016227yuanyuan

 

Post a Comment

<< Home



Search


Recipe Categories
Soups
Salads
Vegetables
Poultry
Pork
Beef
Cakes & Desserts
Miscellaneous

Archives
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
September 2006
October 2006
November 2006
December 2006
January 2007
February 2007
March 2007
April 2007
May 2007
June 2007
July 2007
August 2007
September 2007
October 2007
November 2007
December 2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008
August 2008
September 2008
October 2008
November 2008
December 2008
January 2009
February 2009
March 2009
May 2009
June 2009
September 2009
October 2009
November 2009
December 2009
January 2010
February 2010
March 2010
April 2010
May 2010
June 2010
July 2010
August 2010
September 2010
October 2010
November 2010
December 2010
February 2011
March 2011
April 2011
May 2011
June 2011
July 2011
August 2011
September 2011
July 2012

Miscellaneous
AUSTRALIAN FOOD BLOGGERS
Prev ~ List ~ Random ~ Join ~ Next
Site Ring from Bravenet


Site Feed

counter easy hit

Credits
Blog Design by:


Image created by:
Ximena Maier

Powered by:


Photos, Original Recipes, and Text - (C) Copyright: 2005-2010
At My Table by Neil Murray, all rights reserved.
You may re-post a recipe, please give credit and post a link to this site.

Contact Me
Neil Murray

Follow messytable on Twitter