Leona Valley yellow cherry jam

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Hobart's Cherries, a family-owned orchard on a hillside in southern California's Leona Valley, has one tree that bears pure yellow cherries. We found it by accident last year when a friend and I took our kids up for the morning to pick cherries. We'd climbed through the whole orchard of Bings and Brooks, filling our buckets, and we'd crowed when we spotted a few trees loaded with blushing Rainiers.

And then we saw one gnarled tree covered with small, pale yellow, perfect cherries. We mistook them for Rainiers at first, but there wasn't a tinge of pink anywhere. They tasted different, too: less sweet, but not quite sour. We picked some but didn't think to ask about them when we weighed in and paid. They got lost in the shuffle, mixed in with the crowd.

This year we made the trek to Leona Valley again, and after picking 20 pounds (yes, really) at another orchard, Emery insisted we stop at Hobart's. Not that we needed more cherries - but he had to have the elusive yellow ones. The orchard manager walked us to the back of the orchard. "Stone Hardy Gold," he said. "It's the only one in the valley. I should take some cuttings, I guess, plant a few more."

Not too many people go looking for the Stone Hardy Golds, apparently, and that's a shame, because they've got that ethereal heirloom flavor: complex, each cherry a little different, bred neither for size nor for sugar content. Pitting them took a long time, but the simple jam I made with them is phenomenal and worth the effort.

 

This method works with any cherries. If you happen to find Stone Hardy Golds, so much the better.

Yellow cherry jam

• 1 lb Stone Hardy Gold yellow cherries (or any variety)
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• juice of 1/2 lemon

Pit the cherries (my favorite gadget for this task is the Oxo Good Grips Cherry Pitter). Put them in a pot with the sugar and lemon juice and mix to combine. Let the cherries macerate in the sugar at room temperature for at least an hour and up to two hours; the sugar will draw the juices out of the fruit, and the cherries will end up bathed in a sweet juicy syrup.

Bring the cherry mixture to a boil, then turn down the heat somewhat so the jam doesn't boil over and make a huge mess on your stove. (And yes, I speak from experience here.) Skim the foam from the top of the jam as it rises. Boil the mixture about 40 minutes, or until the juices have thickened a bit.

Ladle the jam into hot, clean jars. You can either process them in a hot-water bath like the canning goddesses do, or you can take the lazy cook's way and put the jars into the refrigerator after they cool. Either way, the jam is not likely to last long once you taste it, for obvious reasons. Especially if you use it to top a slice of Brie on toast, as shown above.


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Pulled pork with pineapple salsa

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I was going to write a few paragraphs about the wonderful company for which I work, and the fact that every month they host a fabulous happy hour, and tell you all the details of yesterday's tiki-themed happy hour for which my colleague Hilary and I provided the food. Then I realized that if I didn't get the words "pulled pork" into the first paragraph I'd be committing SEO suicide.

Those of you who got here from Google because of the title - you don't care how good the mai tais were or who won the hula hoop contest, right? I didn't think so. You want the recipe for the fantastic pulled pork with pineapple salsa that we served in little tortilla chip cups. The pulled pork that disappeared in short order and had my officemates licking their fingers. And who can blame you?

Here's what I love about slow-roasted pork: It's all about the right cut of pig (butt), the right temperature (low), and the right time (a lot). I'm sure people get all crazy with the rubs and the marinades, but I keep it simple: garlic salt, mostly, with a few variations. Stick it in a pan, salt it up, cover it, and put it in to roast overnight. You won't need an alarm clock - your nose will drag you out of bed.

The pineapple salsa was a complete improv, meant to match the tiki theme of the party. It was a good guess. Any fruit-based salsa will work with the salty, smoky pork. Do you have to serve it in little tortilla chip cups? Of course not. By the end of the happy hour, apparently, hungry semi-drunk engineers were scooping the pork into plastic cups and eating it plain - the salsa was long gone. But I do like those bowl-shaped tortilla chip cups for cocktail parties, as they make it easy to serve this as a one-bite finger food.

Slow-roasted pulled pork with pineapple salsa

• One 4-pound pork butt roast
• 2 Tbsp garlic salt
• 2 tsp smoked paprika
• 2 oranges or 6 tangerines, washed, cut in half crosswise
• 2 large cans crushed pineapple in juice, drained (or 1 fresh pineapple, peeled, cored and diced small)
• 1 bunch scallions, finely chopped
• 1 bunch cilantro, finely chopped
• juice of 2 limes
• 1/2 tsp dried chipotle powder
• salt and pepper to taste

Place the pork butt in a medium-sized roasting pan - not too small, because the pork will give off liquid as it cooks, and you don't want the juices to overflow the pan and burn in the oven. Sprinkle the garlic salt and smoked paprika all over the meat. Squeeze the oranges or tangerines over the top of the roast, then put the squeezed-out rinds in the bottom of the pan, around the meat. Cover the pan with aluminum foil.

Put the pan in the oven and turn the temperature to 275 degrees - no need to preheat. Roast the pork for 10 hours. It's easiest to put it in before you go to bed and let it roast overnight.

Once the pork is in the oven, make the salsa by combining the pineapple, scallions, cilantro, lime juice, chipotle powder, and salt and pepper to taste. Mix well and store in the refrigerator overnight - this will help the flavors come together and will tame the heat of the chipotle a bit.

In the morning, take the roasting pan out of the oven and let the pork cool on the counter for half an hour. Then, uncover it, carefully transfer the meat to a cutting board, and shred it with two forks. It will fall apart at the first touch. Combine the shredded meat with some (not all) of the juice from the roasting pan, just enough to keep the meat moist.

Serve the meat immediately with the salsa. You can also keep the cooked meat in the refrigerator for up to five days, or frozen indefinitely. (Note that my tolerance for frozen foods may be higher than yours - I served a fig cake from August 2008 recently and thought it was fine. You might want to interpret "indefinitely" as "for a few months." It's your call.)

Rainier cherry pie on Good Food blog

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It's my week of cherry pie. Last weekend I conquered my fear of pie crust with my Father's Day cherry pie recipe. And today my single-crust Rainier cherry pie is featured on the Good Food blog, written by Evan Kleiman and the staff of my favorite NPR radio program, as part of their Pie-A-Day series. Please stop by, read it, and leave a comment. If I get lots of comments maybe they'll ask me to guest blog again (I hope)!

Read it: Rainier cherry pie from In Erika's Kitchen on the Good Food blog


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Spring salad with cherries and goat cheese

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I think a good salad is like a wedding. What, did you think I was about to talk about the marriage of flavors? Not exactly. I'm talking about poetry. But instead of the traditional wedding rhyme...

Something old
Something new
Something borrowed
Something blue

...my ideal salad is more like...

Something green (lettuce or other greens)
Something sweet (fruit, fresh or dried)
Something cream (cheese)
Something treat! (nuts, seeds, croutons, bacon bits - something salty and crunchy)

My salads are all about juxtapositions. Bitter greens with sweet fruit. Creamy cheese with tart vinaigrette. Soft fruit with crunchy nuts. And so on.

This spring salad with cherries, goat cheese and pumpkin seeds hits all the right notes. The greens came from a friend's garden, and they were perfect. The cherries - we're drowning in them after our cherry-picking excursion this weekend, so they had to have a place in the salad. I thought feta cheese would have been better, but we had none, and in the end the goat cheese was perfect. Toasted pepitas (pumpkin seeds) added just the right amount of nutty crunch. Lightly dressed with a mustard-lemon vinaigrette, this was the first course for our Father's Day celebration. Perfect for celebrating, perfect for spring.

Spring salad with cherries and goat cheese

• 6 cups mixed baby greens, washed
• 1 cup sweet cherries, pitted and halved
• 2 ounces fresh goat cheese
• 1/4 cup pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds), toasted
• 1/4 cup French vinaigrette

 In a large salad bowl, toss together all ingredients. Add more dressing if you like. Serve immediately.


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Cherry pie recipe for Father's Day (or, How I conquered my fear of pie crust)

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This cherry pie (okay, maybe it's more of a cherry galette, but whatever) has gotten me over a significant hump in my culinary life.

Until today I have had a deep insecurity about pie crust. In fact, it was bigger than pie crust: It was about the rolling pin. Every time I would apply a rolling pin to dough, it seemed, bad things happened. Pizza that looked like the state of Michigan made of Swiss cheese. Bits of sticky cookie dough glued to the counter. Nothing ever thin enough, nothing ever turning out anywhere near the way it looked in the pictures. Tough tarts. Floury cookies. Bad things.

But today we took the kids to Leona Valley to pick cherries - and we came home with more than 30 pounds. Pie was inevitable. I'll share a secret: I went to a local gourmet market this afternoon, hoping to find ready-made pie crust in the store's freezer that I might have been able to pass off as my own. They had none. I toyed with the idea of cherry cobbler - that was last year's cop-out when pie crust seemed insurmountable - but ultimately decided it was time to face the music.

Here's what I learned: With sheer determination and two sticks of butter, anything is possible. Meet our new Father's Day tradition.

Note: I made this galette-style so that I could actually make two, to use up more of the 30 pounds of cherries now sitting on my kitchen counter. The recipe below makes one double-crust pie or two single-crust pies or galettes. I used raw cane sugar because I love the way its dusky undertones work with the cherries, but regular granulated sugar would work fine too.

Cherry pie (or cherry galette) for Father's Day

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup plus 4 Tbsp raw cane sugar
• 2 sticks (1/2 pound) butter, frozen, cut into small cubes
• ice water
• 8 cups sweet cherries, pitted (my favorite tool for this: Oxo Good Grips Cherry Pitter)
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp milk

First, take a deep breath and make the crust: Place the flour, salt, and 2 Tbsp sugar in the food processor and give it a spin to combine. Open the processor and sprinkle the bits of frozen butter over the flour mixture. Pulse five or six times, or until the whole thing inside looks like wet sand.

Now dribble over about 1/4 cup of ice water and pulse again; check the consistency. Does it hold together when you pinch some between your fingers? If not, add small amounts of ice water, pulse, and repeat. When it's ready, it will not look wet at all - you'll only know it's done by the fact that it holds together when you pinch it. Turn the dough out onto the counter, press it into two disks, wrap the disks in plastic wrap, and refrigerate them for at least an hour.

Put the pitted cherries in a mixing bowl with 1/2 cup of the raw sugar and the cornstarch, and mix thoroughly. Let the cherries sit in the sugar-cornstarch mixture at room temperature while the dough is chilling. This will help the cherry juice flow once you get the pie in the oven. Go do something else for the balance of the hour.

When it's time, heat the oven to 450 degrees. Sprinkle the counter with flour and roll out one of the dough disks to a rough circle. It's okay if it's not perfect - mine certainly weren't. Transfer the circle of dough to a baking pan lined with parchment paper. Heap half the cherry mixture into the center of the dough, then fold the edges of the circle up and part of the way onto the filling, leaving some of the cherries showing in the middle. Repeat with the other disk of dough and the rest of the cherries.

Combine the egg and the milk and brush the edges of the pies with this mixture, using a pastry brush. Sprinkle the remaining 2 Tbsp sugar over the edges of the pies. Bake about 40 minutes or until the pies are golden brown on the edges and the cherries in the middle are shriveled and juicy. Let cool at least 1/2 hour before slicing.


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