Am I Blue?

No, I am not blue, but my berries are.

Saturday at the Farmer’s Market, the dance of the summer season is in full swing; while the flood of strawberries is starting to dwindle, the cherries are in their prime, and blueberries are just starting to appear in gorgeous array.

The colors of blueberries are amazing. I say colors because they are not a single hue, but show varied tones on each individual berry, from the frosted lavender bloom over the glossy indigo skin to the deep violet interior, each small round berry is a work of art. And when they are fully ripe and freshly picked, each one is a revelation in flavor that bursts in the mouth in an explosion of inky juice.

So, of course, even though I had already bought a quart of sour cherries in order to make a pie for dessert that night, I saw quarts of blueberries sitting in neat rows on a table, and had to have them, too.

I resisted the urge to bake them together in a pie, though I think that might have been interesting, and would be a worthy experiment someday. Instead, I decided on making a cake, coffee cake or scones. I would have made muffins, but Morganna pleaded that I not, because she had recently had a blueberry muffin and had gotten quite sick on it, and thus was not ready to brave another any time soon.

So, cake or scones it was.

I decided upon scones, and realized when I researched recipes that I could make two batches of them–one to have for breakfast Sunday morning before we drove Morganna back to her father’s house, and one to give to my father instead of a birthday cake.

Thinking I was insufferably clever, I got up early Sunday morning and proceeded to bake two batches of blueberry scones from a recipe I had never used before. I set out two mixing bowls, measured out the rinsed berries into two other bowls, and measured all the ingredients in sequence: two and a quarter cups of flour for this bowl, and the same for that one. And so forth.

I even utilized my new trick of rubbing the butter into the flour with my fingers, emboldened by the flakiness of the pie I had made the day before and the galette from several days previously. That went fine. In fact, all was well until it came time to mix the dough and then knead the fresh berries into it until they were evenly distributed.

The recipe, which I had never used before, came from Leslie Weiner and Barbara Albright’s wee book, Simply Scones, which is still in print and available used as well. I will admit to playing with it a bit, mostly in terms of flavoring, but also in the sequence of mixing, but really, I didn’t do anything that would radically alter the dough in a significant way.

And in truth, the authors mentioned that the dough was sticky.

But, I am sorry. To my mind, sticky does not adequately warn the unwary baker of the wily, unruly nature of this particular dough. It is fractious, cantankerous, gluey and goopy in the extreme, and mixing it together with a spoon first thing in the morning sans coffee was a frustrating exercise in patience. I was extremely glad for my well-developed forearm muscles, as the dough fought being mixed together as tenaciously as a pitbull terrier who is desperately trying to hold onto a favored toy. I stirred, it pulled. I pushed, it glopped. I folded, and it attempted to evade.

And of course, after finally getting the first batch mixed up, I was winded, but had to face another bowl of the stuff with shaking hands and frazzled nerves. I nearly put all of it in the fridge to face at another time, but I really wanted to give a sweet to Dad for his birthday, so I took a deep breath, counted to twenty and dove in with renewed vigor and an iron will.

And lo, the dough was done. I just needed to knead the berries into the twin piles of rich yellow stickiness.

The authors blithely warned that I might want to use “lightly floured hands” to accomplish this task, but their admonition was to no avail. I floured my hands lightly and ended up with dough up to my elbows, and blueberries attempting escape at every turn. I felt like B’rer Rabbit and the tarbaby, only I was smart and did not try to use my feet to free my hands.

I did manage to mix the berries in, though I have no idea how evenly I did it. By the time I was done with the first batch, I didn’t much care how evenly it had turned out. I just eyed the second dough ball, scraped as much dough from my hands as possible, turned the sink tap on with a relatively clean elbow and scrubbed my fingers and palms clean.

I then dried my hands, dug out the Baker’s Joy, sprayed my hands liberally, and set to work on the second batch.

Baker’s Joy is my friend. Not only is it a good alternative to greasing and flouring cake pans, it can make instant teflon for the hands when it comes to herculean baking jobs such as kneading some fresh berries into cthuloid scone dough. The second batch was subdued in half the time it took for me to wrangle the berries into the first batch.

All that was left was the shaping of the scones, and putting the crumb topping on, then cutting them and baking them.

Ah, yes, the crumb topping.

Instead of making two batches of it, I simply doubled the recipe and made a typical struesel sort of topping. But after I shaped both sticky piles of dough into relatively flat, round disks on silpat-lined baking sheets, I eyed the bowl of crumbly goodness and then looked at the scone dough.

And realized with a sinking heart that there was absolutely no way I was going to put all of those crumbs on top of those two batches of scones. The recipe had instructed me to make way too much stuesel stuff.

I did the best I could to scoop and pat the crumbs onto the top of the sticky rounds, but I still ended up with lots of crummy bits decorating the silpats. As it was, when I finally stopped with the patting and squishing, there was still a good handful of struesel left.

I gave it to the dogs. It was probably not a good idea, healthwise, but the dogs were happy with the arrangement. They thought I was just showing them how much I loved them.

After that, I cut the scones into eight wedges each and baked them. The cutting, of course, made more of a crummy mess, but that was okay. They baked up beautifully, with a delicate, cakey texture and a scrumtious flavor. The crumbs really added a lot to the scones, such that I do not regret using them. I just will adjust the recipe next time to make fewer, or put the excess in the freezer. Or, give them to the dogs again, since they liked them so much the first time.

Blueberry Crumble Scones

Crumb Ingredients:

3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 firmly packed brown sugar
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cardamom
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 cup chilled butter

Dough Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cups raw sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cardamom
1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
1/2 cup chilled butter
2 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon double strength vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries
Baker’s Joy

Method:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lay silpat on baking sheet and spray lightly with canola oil spray, or Baker’s Joy. Or just smear slightly with butter.

Mix the dry ingredients for the crumb topping thoroughly. Cut the butter into it until it looks like coarse crumbs. Set aside until needed.

In a large bowl, stir together dry ingredients. Cut the butter stick into 1/2 inch cubes and distribute evenly over the flour mixture. Using whatever method you prefer, cut butter into the flour until mixture looks like coarse crumbs. (Again, if you use your fingers, it will look more like flakes or shavings rather than shaggy crumbs.)

In a small bowl, mix together eggs, milk and vanilla. Make a well in the butter and flour mixture, and pour liquids into well, then with a sturdy spoon and a great deal of muscle power, stir until well combined. It will be very sticky. That is okay, it is the way it is supposed to be.

Spray your hands with Baker’s Joy and knead the fresh berries into the dough. It will look like you have too many berries and the dough won’t hold together. Don’t worry, it will hold. It will also taste good.

Scoop dough out of bowl, and dump it onto the silpat. Sort of smoosh and pat it into a 9 or 10 inch circle and flatten it on top. Wash your hands.

Scoop up the crumbs and squish and pat it onto the top of the dough circle. This is messy. Do not fret, it will taste fine when it is done. Do this until you have used most of the crumbs.

Spray a bench knife or chef’s knife with Baker’s Joy and use it to cut the dough circle into eight wedges. This is also messy–lots of crumbs attempt escape at this point. If you want, pick them up and press them back on top of the dough. If not, don’t worry over it.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until the top is lightly browned Cool for ten minutes on baking sheet, then remove to a wire rack to cool. Recut into wedges. Serve warm.

They turned out exceedingly well–very fragrant, with a moist tender crumb that contrasted with the crunchy struesel. The berries were sweet and oozed with floral juice.

Of course, by the time I took Dad his batch, I found out that blueberries are his least favorite berries. And Mom, apparently, despises them.

Oops. But, Dad said he would try them anyway, because they looked awfully good.

I told him that if he didn’t like them, to let me know, and I would bake him whatever cake he would like for his birthday and bring it next week when we passed through on our way to Morganna’s father’s house.

Chinese Fermented Black Beans

A staple of the Chinese pantry, fermented black soy beans, also known as salted black beans, add a giant helping of flavor to a variety of foods.

Some people seem to think that they are “stinky” or overly salty, but I don’t know what they are talking about–I love the smell of them and don’t find them to be offensive at all. The brand that I use has ginger added to them, which adds a tiny whisper of floral fragrance to the earthy, salty scent of the beans. It is a mysterious fragrance, reminiscent of ripe cheese or newly tilled, rich humus in a spring garden, and it never fails to perk up my appetite. Every time I smell it, my mouth waters, because I know that something good is about to happen to my tastebuds.

I am told that some folks soak them in cold water then drain them about a half an hour before using them to remove the excessive salt, but I never have seen that to be a necessary step in using them. I just crush them lightly with a spoon before throwing them into the hot oil in the wok before anything else goes in to cook. This releases the flavor of the beans into the oil so it carries to all parts of the dish.

Fermented black bean sauce, which I have also used, is a different condiment altogether. I found after experimenting with both, that I prefer the beans themselves for several reasons. For one thing, they are more versatile; you can change around the other flavors that you mix them with to create completely new dishes, while the black bean sauce will put a singular flavor stamp on whatever you cook with it. Another reason I prefer them is that most of the black bean sauces I have come across use a lot of oil and salt and it will make any dish that is cooked with it overly heavy, as well as being very salty in flavor.

Fermented black beans are strongly flavored, so they are classically paired with other strong aromatic ingredients such as garlic, scallion, ginger and chile. Garlic is my favorite partner for black beans; the sharp tang of the garlic is the top note that rides the crest of the darker wave of black bean. Perhaps because my first exposure to black beans was in ma po tofu, I like to have the fiery kiss of chile peppers involved in most dishes that I season with black beans, but I will restrain myself if I have to. It doesn’t do to use too many strong flavors all at once–instead of enhancing the natural flavors of the main ingredients, it can mask them and make what could have been a delightful dish into a muddy mess.

This evening, I used black beans with garlic, scallions and a single Thai bird chile to season a simple stir fry featuring fresh pork loin and the first string beans from the Farmer’s market. An uncomplicated dish that I usually serve with steamed jasmine rice for a plain supper, it can be cooked with many variations, but I believe that the addition of black beans was an inspired choice that will appear on our table more often. It added a lovely complication to the usually clean, uncluttered flavors of the dish that a client of mine once likened to the cooking of Susanna Foo. (I was extremely flattered by this comparison, and I still blush when I think about Gala’s praise of my Chinese dishes.)

Pork and String Beans With Fermented Black Beans

Ingredients:

1/2 pound lean pork loin chop, cut into thin 1″by 1/4″ strips
1/8 cup Shao Hsing wine or dry sherry
1 tablespoon corn starch
1 pound fresh green beans stringed and rinsed
boiling water for blanching green beans beans
peanut oil for stir frying
2 teaspoons fermented black beans
4 large cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
3 scallions, white parts thinly sliced
1 Thai bird chile, thinly sliced on the diagonal
1 teaspoon thin soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon raw sugar
2 tablespoons chicken broth or stock
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
green tops to scallions cut on the diagonal in 1″ lengths

Method:

Toss pork with wine and cornstarch. Marinate while preparing other ingredients, or at least for twenty minutes.

Blanch string beans in boiling water for one or two minutes, until tender-crisp and very brilliant green. Drain and rinse with cold water, then pat with paper towels until they are as dry as possible.

Lightly crush fermented black beans with the back of a spoon.

Heat wok over high heat; when it smokes, add enough oil to stir fry in. Throw in the fermented black beans, garlic, white part of scallion and chile, and stir fry for one minute, until quite fragrant.

Lift meat out of marinade (reserve marinade) and add to wok, flattening it into a single layer on the bottom of wok with the back of a wok shovel. Allow to sit still on the bottom of the wok for one minute to begin browning on one side, then stir fry vigorously. As meat begins to look mostly cooked, add the reserved marinade, soy sauce, sugar and broth.

Add string beans, and stir fry until the sauce thickens and clings to the meat and beans. This is a fairly dry dish. Add scallion tops, stir to heat through, drizzle with sesame oil and serve with steamed rice.

The blog is back!

Well, it was a nice idea.

I (“I” in this case being Zak, not Barbara) tried to move the blog to http://www.tigersandstrawberries.com/, but Blogger didn’t feel like cooperating. At all. So, now that page has a redirect here until I figure something else out.

I apologize for the mess. It could have been worse … several years ago I managed to ‘lose’ all of Barbara’s recipe files — hundreds of them. I don’t think she’s entirely forgiven me, and I haven’t forgiven myself, for sure, but I was bound and determined not to let THAT happen again. And it won’t.

So, enough from me. I now return you to your regularly scheduled culinary entertainment.

Folklife Festival and Food

So, after the weekly trip to the Farmer’s Market, I came back and scanned the New York Times online edition and found an article on the ongoing Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

And suddenly, I am regretting that I no longer live close to Washington.

This year, for the first time in its 39-year history, the Folklife Festival will include an entire program entitled “Food Culture USA” which will feature recent immigrants and famous chefs doing cooking demonstrations, as well as talks from wild mushroom foragers, members of a Tanzanian coffee growing co-op, and artisan cheesemakers. The theme of the food program will revolve around sustainability issues, the innovations brought by immigrants and the roles of chefs and home cooks in shaping American food.

I am seriously bummed not to be there, as this is just the sort of thing that I am always thinking about, talking about and writing about.

But, as much as I regret not being able to attend, I am just as happy to know that the event is happening, and is getting a lot of publicity. It means that the things that matter to me are becoming part of the consciuosness of others, and that makes me feel like my blathering is worthwhile.

So–if you are anywhere near Washington DC, the festival started June 23 and is going on until July 5 on the Mall.

If you attend, have fun, take pictures, and think of me.

Cherry Memories

Sour cherries are my favorite fruit and always have been. Yes, even as much as I love strawberries, I love cherries even more.

When I was a little girl, I never wanted Grandma to make me a birthday cake.

When she asked me what kind of cake I wanted her to bake for my birthday, I always gave the same answer.

Cherry pie.

And she would toss back her bandana-clad head and laugh, but on my birthday, I always had a pie made out of the prettiest scarlet sour cherries with a flakey crust made of lard. She’d cut a cursive monogram of a “B” on the top crust as a vent so everyone would know it was for me. The cherries themsleves were sour enough to bring tears to your eyes, and Grandma never over-sweetened them, so their burst of tart juice cut the richness of the crust perfectly.

When I was three or so, my Grandpa gave me a pair of sour cherry saplings as an early birthday present. I remember how I clapped my hands and danced around them with the watering can after Dad dug the holes, backfilled them with cow manure, also donated by Grandpa, and then set the root balls in, and hilled good dark earth over them. The first year they were planted, they bloomed like a shower of snow, and I was thrilled, but of course, everyone explained that they wouldn’t bear cherries that year.

Those saplings grew into shapely little trees, and I remember playing under their shade in the summer and thier blossoms in the spring. And the first year they bore fruit–I think I was six or seven, I was ecstatic, and raced into the kitchen to tell Mom that there were tiny green cherries on the trees.

She came out to see them and smiled, nodding at them.

Every day, I went out to check on them. I watered the trees when it was dry and patted their branches and petted the wee green fruits, watching them grow plump and shapely, my mouth watering in anticipation.

“She’s like a miser with those cherries,” Dad would laugh after I had dragged him out for the third time that week to look at them as they started to ripen. “I swear she has them counted.”

Aren’t they pretty?

They were beautiful, that first crop of cherries.

One afternoon, I saw that some of the cherries were ripe on one side, and my Grandma told me on the phone that the next morning, the other side would be ripe, and I could taste them.

I could barely get to sleep that night, for the thought of those beautiful cherries, my cherries, my first crop of cherries off of my very own sour cherry trees would be waiting for me in the morning and I could finally taste them.

I set my heart on a breakfast of nothing but sour cherries and milk.

I did sleep, of course.

And woke up with the sun on a June morning to a sky bluer than a landlocked child’s dream of the ocean. I didn’t bother to put on clothes, I just tumbled out of bed in my pajamas and darted for the back door, my long hair a tumbled halo around my head, my bare feet chilled in the dewy grass, my faithful blonde and white border collie, Rufus, bounding by my side.

The sound of birdcalls was loud and raucus.

And it was coming from my cherry trees.

I raced toward the trees, joy and desire for gustatory satisfaction spurring my short legs to churn across the yard in a blur of purposeful motion. Rufus dashed back and forth and around me like a whirling dervish dog, her white-tipped tail wagging incessantly.

When I got to the trees, they erupted in a rush of wings, and birds of all shapes, colors and sizes burst from the leaves and flung themselves at the sky in a torrent of twitters, chirps and squawks. Cardinals, bluejays, starlings, chickadees, mockingbirds and sparrows all flew past me, their feathers stirring the still morning air into a froth of wind.

At first, I was thrilled to see so many birds, and I clapped my hands, jumping up and down.

Rufus, on the other hand, knew damned good and well those birds had been up to no good, so she set up a chorus of sharp barks, and dark snarls, her nose pointed to the sky.

Joy froze in my heart as I realized that all of the ripe cherries were gone, with only their stems and pits dangling from the branches to remind me that they had been there at all. Even the cherries that were half-ripe had been taken–or rather, the ripe parts had been pecked, leaving the unripe half still clinging to the pit, forlorn and ruined.

Tears stung my eyes, and I flung myself on the ground and wept, beating the earth with my fists and feet, as I howled, “You damned old birds! You ate my cherries, you bad, bad things! You bad, bad, mean damned old birds!”

Rufus whined and flung herself down beside me, her pink tongue lapping at my cheeks as she nuzzled at my face. I glanced up at her, and my last coherent words were, “You should go bite all those awful birds–they stole all our cherries.”

After that pronouncement, I hid my face in my hands and sobbed miserably.

Mom came running out, sloshing coffee down the front of her housecoat in her haste to see what had me screeching so hard; she probably thought that I had tried to climb the tree and had fallen and broken my head.

Our neighbor, a tiny white-haired lady named Mrs. Welch, came running out of her house next door, and she and Mom met next to the tree, and they picked me up out of the grass, where my rage had subsided into incoherent sobs and snorts.

“Did you fall, Sweetpea?” Mrs. Welch asked as I hiccuped and shook my head. “Did you hurt yourself?” Mom asked, twisting my arms and feet and legs this way and that to see if they were broken. “Can you move your fingers and toes?” I nodded and pointed at the tree, before dissolving into tears again. “Did you fall out of the tree?” Mom asked. “I told you not to climb it.”

Why are adults so damned dumb? Couldn’t they see what was wrong? Even as they fussed over me the starlings began flitting back to their posts at the top of the tree, and then the mockingbirds and bluejays. The brazen birds went back to gobbling down my precious cherries while these two crazy women clucked over me instead of helping me get those goddamned birds out of my tree!

Seeing those birds hopping around in my tree, rapaciously tearing into my fruit rekindled my rage, and it erupted into a wave of fury. Shaking off Mom and Mrs. Welch, I flung myself at the tree and began shaking the trunk with all of the strength in my body while I howled imprecations at the feathered interlopers above.

Rufus leapt into action and jumped at the tree, howling a war-cry, her ears down and her teeth bared.

“Get outta my tree you nasty thieving varmints, you!” I screamed. Most of the birds flew away, wisely avoiding the two-legged tempest below, but one bold bluejay refused to quit and cede me the field. He just screeched right back at me and continued gulping down cherries. Scooping up a rock, I took aim and was just about to bean that awful bird between the eyes, when Mom’s left hand intercepted my arm and her right hand smacked into my bottom.

“Young lady!” she shouted into my ear as the bluejay kept blithely eating, though he did punctuate his repast with a few loud imprecations of his own in my direction. My Mom, undeterred by my twisting and the bird’s screams, continued her tirade. “I better not ever catch you trying to throw a rock at a bird again.” Every other word was emphasized by a good whack on my backside. “Don’t you ever think to hurt a bird ever again, you hear me?”

Defeated, the rock dropped from my clutching fingers. That sassy bird kept up a steady stream of invective while I watched him eat every last one of the ripe cherries on that tree. “Damned bird,” I muttered under my breath, glaring up at it with the patented Look of Death.

Mrs. Welch petted my hair, but Mom gave me one more swat. “And stop cursing, you little shit. I have no idea where you learned to do that.”

I wisely kept my mouth shut; it wouldn’t do to blurt out in front of our nice lady neighbor that I learned all my cuss words from her and Dad and Gram and Pappa. I just nodded and agreed, and watched that damned bluejay fly off. “Fat old bird,” I muttered. “I hope you get a stomach ache.”

Mom snorted and stomped back toward the house. “You better come in and have breakfast,” she called back to me, but I shook my head. “Rufus and I are staying out here to scare the birds away,” I declared. “So I can eat the cherries that ripen tonight tomorrow morning.”

“Suit yourself,” Mom called over her shoulder as she went inside.

Mrs. Welch smiled and patted my head. “So, what are you going to do?” she asked.

“I’ll yell at them and shake the tree every time they land,” I declared, crossing my arms. I glanced down at Rufus, and reached out to scratch behind her ear. “And Rufus will bark at them.”

“Be careful with shaking the trees,” she warned me. “That might hurt them.”

I nodded. “I promise only to shake hard enough to scare them away, but not enough to hurt the trees. I wouldn’t want to do that.”

Smiling, Mrs. Welch turned to go into her kitchen. “Wait here. I might have something that can help.”

She was gone for a while, and while we waited, Rufus and I worked out that we’d pretend to be wild Indians and would give war whoops at the birds every time they tried to land. We may not be able to really take a tomahawk to the birds, but we could make it sound like we were going to.

Mrs. Welch came back with a basket over one arm and a stack of disposable aluminum pie pans in her other hand, while string dangled from her apron pocket. Taking out of the basket some heavy kitchen shears, she sat on the grass with me, and showed me how to cut stars and hearts and moon shapes out of the aluminum, and then she carefully used an awl to punch holes in them. I threaded string through them, and then she helped me hang them all over the trees. “Birds don’t always like shiny things, so this will help scare them,” she told me.

I nodded soberly, then told her how Rufus and I were going to make like we were wild Indians and whoop at them every time they flew near the trees. Mrs. Welch asked if our tribe could use another member, and after consulting with Rufus, we came to the consensus that our tribe could always use such an upstanding lady as Mrs. Welch among us.

So, every time a bird landed, Mrs. Welch helped me hoot and holler at it until it flew away, while Rufus danced a war dance and yipped and barked in her best impersonation of a coyote.

After we were tuckered out from all that war dancing, Mrs. Welch asked me if the tribe might be a bit hungry. I eyed that covered basket, as Mrs. Welch produced freshly baked biscuits and a thermos of milky coffee from its depths. A jelly jar and a spoon soon followed, and were duly set out on the napkin she spread out on the grass.

“Scaring birds is mighty hungry work,” she told me as she poured a small cup of warm, milky coffee for me. She spread some of her homemade blackberry jam on the biscuits and I giggled because I liked the way the seeds crunched under my teeth.

While we had breakfast, we gossipped about the neighbors’ dogs and cats and who had the best flower beds. Rufus was a very polite tribal member. She laid down beside me and waited until Mrs. Welch had spread jam on a biscuit and set it in front of her white paws, and patted her head and said, “That’s allright, it is for you,” before she picked it up daintily, then gobbled it down.

While Rufus was licking her lips, Inoticed that there were a lot less birds coming to eat the cherries.

After breakfast, Mrs. Welch went inside to watch her stories and have a nap, but Rufus and I stayed there all day. Mom brought me a grilled cheese sandwich and a thermos of cream of tomato soup for lunch, which Rufus and I shared after she went back inside to start cooking supper. We spent the rest of the afternoon whooping and barking at the dwindling number of birds who braved our antics to try and steal a few more cherries.

We would have eaten dinner outside, but Dad wouldn’t hear of it.

“Next year,” he promised me after Mom told him of my shameful behavior, “next year we’ll put a net over the trees to keep the birds out so you can get some cherries.”

“You mean, we could have put a net over it to save my cherries?” I asked, incredulous.

Boy are adults dim, I thought. Here we could have avoided this whole mess, and they didn’t even think about it. Gosh.

I told Grandma about it on the phone, just before bed. She told me to get up before the birds and go out and pick cherries before the sun was up.

Mom refused to set an alarm clock, since it was Dad’s day off, so I just told myself to wake up before the sun.

Which is what I did.

Dawn was grey and silent when I padded out of the back door, with Rufus galumphing at my heels. A damp mist wafted through the trees, half-obscuring the houses as we drifted across the wet grass. I carried a cereal bowl in one hand and a flashlight in the other. We dashed breathlessly to the cherry trees against the back fence; I clicked on the light and flashed it between the leaves.

Dangling like plump rubies before my eyes were ripe cherries. Stifling a chortle, I gave a wobbly victory dance before running to the back porch and dragging down my step stool. I climbed up and started picking them, dropping them with little ringing plunks into the bowl.

There weren’t all that many.

But I didn’t care.

There were some. And they were ripe, red, and juicy.

And they were mine.

My own.

My precious.

I think that there was only a handful that I could get to before the birds woke up and decended upon the fruit-laden upper branches.

The trees were denuded of fruit by an hour after sunrise.

I took my meager harvest inside and waited until Mom got up at eight. I stared at the cherries while Rufus curled up at my feet and huffed a sigh before going to sleep.

After Mom got up, I asked if I could go see Mrs. Welch. Mom told me I could go so long as I came back when she called me for breakfast.

I dashed off, clutching the bowl of cherries to my breast.

By the time I got to Mrs. Welch’s door, and knocked, I was very impatient to try the cherries. My mouth watered in anticipation of the sensation of all of that delicious sour juice bursting on my tongue.

When she answered the door, the smell of freshly brewed coffee and baked biscuits swept over me, and I nearly swooned. “Come in, come in, Mrs. Welch said. “What do you have? Your first harvest?”

Nodding soberly, I set the cherries down on her little kitchen table. There really weren’t very many cherries in the bottom of the bowl–the birds didn’t leave me much more than a handful.

But they were mine.

And I was all set to share them with Mrs. Welch, who had helped me chase the birds away.

Mrs. Welch set the biscuits on the table and gave me another cup of coffee which was mostly warm milk with just enough coffee to color it and to make me feel grown up. “And you brought these over to share with me?” she asked, her bow-shaped mouth stretching in a smile.

I nodded. “Rufus doesn’t like cherries, and you helped scare the birds away.” I pushed the bowl over to her. “You have the first one.”

Mrs. Welch shook her head. “No, no–I’ve watched you watch those cherry trees for years. The first one should be yours.”

I grinned and picked up a cherry by the stem, then nudged the bowl towards her again. “We both eat one at the same time?”

Mrs. Welch’s smile deepened, and a dimple winked in her pink cheek. She plucked a cherry from the bowl with a graceful little hand and on the count of three, the two of us bit into the cherries at the same time.

Citrus-sour juice jetted into our mouths, and our eyes popped open at the intensity. The floral aftertaste of the cherry struck our tongues and we both grinned. “Now that’s a cherry!” Mrs. Welch exclaimed, giggling. “Sour cherries are the best fruit because they tickle your tongue.”

I nodded avidly, and spitting out the pit onto a paper napkin, took another cherry and bit into this one slowly, savoring the wild dance of flavors and textures in my mouth. “These are the best cherries ever,” I murmurred in agreement.

Mrs. Welch nodded, and smiled. “That’s because you put your heart into them,” she said. “Tending those trees, watering them, and keeping bugs away and scaring away the birds. That’s what makes these cherries the best I’ve ever tasted.”

We ate that first meager harvest together, Mrs. Welch and I, laughing and sipping coffee and nibbling biscuits.

My next birthday, Grandpa gifted me with some bird netting, which Dad and I installed the next spring after the flowers were spent, and that year we harvested enough cherries for Grandma to make more pies than I could eat, so she ended up canning cherries to make pie in the winter.

But no matter how many cherries there were, I always brought the very first handful to Mrs. Welch, and we shared them together, eating them out of hand, because she understood that sour cherries were better than the sweetest berries or the crispest apples.

They were the best because they were mine, and I grew them, and they made your tongue dance with wakefulness and joy.

Using a cherry pitter is easier than I thought it would be. I can’t imagine using this critter with ten pounds of cherries, but for a pint, it was completely doable.

This batch of cherries came from the Athens Farmer’s Market, of course. Morganna wanted them–and she had a choice between sweet or sour cherries, and not surprisingly, she chose sour. She didn’t eat many, though, so I had to do something with them. In preparation for baking with them, I picked up a little manual cherry pitter at Sur la Table on Tuesday when I was there to teach a class in Dim Sum. (I forgot to take pictures of all the goodies we made in class, too. I could kick myself.)

The pitter made short work of a pint of little sour cherries.

Then there was the problem of what to make with them. By the time I started baking last night it was ten o’clock, so I was pretty sure I didn’t want to take the time to make a wee tart in a tart pan. That would require pre-baking the shell, filling it, making a sugar glaze and and then baking it again.

I settled on my all-time favorite dessert, a galette. But sour cherries alone sounded boring, so instead, I paired them with almonds. Almonds and cherries are a classic combination; many German kuchen feature the kissing cousins of the fruit and nut world as main flavorings. I say kissing cousins because both almonds and cherries are stone fruits, part of the genus “Prunus,” which in turn, are part of the family, “Rosaceae.”

“Rosaceae?” As in rose, I bet you are wondering.

As in rose. Yes, in addition to rose, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries , apples, pears and quince, the family Rosaceae includes all the Prunus species–cherries, plums, apricots, peaches and almonds.

Which means, of course, that rosewater would be nice sneaked into a cherry tart some day.

But not last night–I had just made several desserts featuring a whiff of rosewater, and I didn’t want the flavor to get worn out.

So instead of grabbing for the rosewater, I picked up the almond extract, a heady flavoring that is made from bitter almonds. This, I used to flavor the pastry dough for

Cherry Almond Galette

The main flavoring ingredients for a cherry-almond galette.

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick chilled unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
1 teaspoon almond extract
barely 1/3 cup ice water
1/4 cup sliced almonds
1/4 cup dry, coarsely crushed vanilla or almond cookie crumbs
1 pint fresh sour cherries, washed and pitted
1 tablespoon raw sugar, or to taste

Method:

Preheat oven to 4oo degrees.

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl, then scatter cold butter cubes evenly over the surface of the flour. Cut in butter using whatever method you like, until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. (Usually, I use a pastry blender, but last night, I tried using my hands. For a wonder, this yielded as tender and flakey a crust as I usually get with the blender, in far less time and with less effort. I was very careful to only use my fingertips, so as to avoid melting the butter overmuch.)

Here I am, pressing my luck, making pastry dough by hand. Usually I use a pastry blender to cut the butter in, but I wanted to see if I could be as cool as Madeline Kammen and Julia Child.

The butter is blended in when the mixture looks like coarse crumbs, though when you use your hands it looks more like flakes or shreds than crumbs.

Roll out the dough into a twelve-inch diameter circle, more or less.

Press the almonds into the surface of the pastry dough all over the surface except for a border about one and a half inches wide around the circumference. Sprinkle the cookie crumbs evenly over the almonds, then arrange the cherries in a single layer over the cookie crumbs and almonds. Sprinkle with one tablespoon (or more if you like your cherries a little sweeter than I do) of raw sugar, then fold and pleat the edge up over the cherries.

Then, I placed the cherries in a single layer on the crust, sprinkled them with raw sugar, and then gathered the edges and pleated them roughly.

Transfer to a silpat-lined baking sheet (if you are afraid of moving the filled tart, then transfer the dough to the baking sheet first, and then fill and shape it–but if I can move it without destroying it, you probably can, too) and bake for thirty to forty five minutes. Check after twenty five minutes–if the cherries are starting to blacken, place a piece of foil over the galette, and keep baking in order to crisp up the crust.

It is best served warm, but even cold it makes a good breakfast, as Zak and I can attest to.

Especially with hot, strong black coffee.

I forgot to take a picture before we cut into the galette, but you can get the idea anyway. The crunchy almonds and almond-flavored crust are a perfect foil for the sour cherry filling.