Cherry Pit Liqueur

I was complaining for a whole week about how there would be no local cherries this year due to weather conditions. But then I stopped in at the Lawrence Farms Orchard in Newburgh expecting nothing more than a fun day with my son, and got rewarded with my favorite cherry: sours. I think sour cherries taste more like cherries than sweet ones do. Does that make sense? Last year, also a bad cherry crop, I made one sacred jar of sour cherry vanilla jam. It was so good that I cried a little inside every time I had a spoonful.

Montmorency hanging on a tree.

I bought about ten pounds of cherries, and they were on sale for $3.99 a pound, which to me is still pretty expensive. But once I started picking, I couldn't stop. There were two kinds, the very sour and bright red Montmorency, which has yellow flesh, and the other one was sweeter and darker, with red flesh, and I can't remember what the owner called it, but it was sweet enough to eat right off the tree. I made Montmorency jam with white balsamic vinegar, and the other cherries became a jam with homemade black cherry brandy. Right now, I'm busy with starting a jam company, that posting jam recipes will probably not happen. But why not take a look at Nomnivorous's beautiful balsamic cherry preserves? And I know there's some sour cherry love over at Food in Jars. Sour cherry anything is SO worthwhile.

Montmorency in a big bucket.

To return to my story: I had four pounds of each kind. That's not a huge amount of cherries, but to be honest, cherries are kind of a pain to pit. Everybody has their favorite choice of pitter. I know OXO has one that is a favorite among jammers, like Hitchhiking to Heaven and Snowflake Kitchen. You might also want to check out Punk Domestics' Cherry Pitter Guide. There was some conversation recently among some canners about this topic, and I brought up how I used to pit them as a child: my mother handed me a bobby pin, stretched open, and you used the closed end to scoop out the pit. Miserable, some people commented. There is also the handy paper clip for scooping your pits. Or the ever handy no pitter style: use your hands and rip them open. I did this for the Montmorency cherries. Really they just slip out. But for the darker sour cherries, I used my trusty ancient pitter/press. It works pretty darn well for an old gal. 

The old gal done good.

 What to do with all those glistening red pits? I don't know about you, but they look way too pretty to put on the compost heap. I'm a sucker for using the "garbage" end of a project. I just can't throw something out unless I'm sure there's no other use for it. Last year I made Noyaux, with apricot pits. I threw some cherry pits in, as well. Cherry pits are actually often used to make almond extract, so this may be what my liqueur will end up being. With all these pits, I decided to cover them in brandy and wait a few weeks for cherry pit liqueur. That name is almost as appetizing as corn cob jelly, I know, but as they say, it is what it is.

No need for fancy stuff. I did four pounds in a half hour.

Please note that there is some debate on whether cherry pits, and other stone fruit pits, most notably apricot and peach, contain enough cyanide to hurt a person. I have researched it a bit and found that it's negligible enough for me. In some cases, there is support to the opposite, that apricot kernals in particular have cancer fighting potential. In any case, the way to avoid all this is to bake or boil your pits for a short while before you use them to flavor your jam or liqueur. You can go to my post on noyaux liqueur to get a few more details on this.

It's a "pitty" I have to wait so long to drink it!

Brandied Pear Slices, Halves and Wholes

It's no wonder that artists love to work with pears. They are truly beautiful. I couldn't stop taking photos of these pears, the smallest of the almost fifty pounds of pears that I picked with Kaela of Local Kitchen. I had connected with a kindly man who owns three Anjou pear trees, and wanted to see the fruit go to a good home. I asked Kaela if she was game, and she was, not surprisingly knowing her predilection for picking fruit, and we spent a good hour or so gathering these beauties in the early morning sun. A good lot of the pears were hard and green, but they softened up quickly--maybe a bit too quickly--and I was on the move to preserve them for winter, which is now in my mind a bit more these days.

I canned many in syrup with varying spices (fennel and vanilla was one of my favorites). I also simmered some until soft for pear juice, which I froze with hopes of pear jelly sometime in the colder future. As a side note, after the juice was drained I put the pulp through a food mill and with the remaining pear-sauce I made pear butter with cardamom, again using Food In Jars' slow-cooker fruit butter recipe, which hasn't failed me yet.

I had this last batch of small ones that I wanted to can whole. Now, fifty pounds is a whole lot, as you know, and I didn't really have time for peeling. Or maybe I just didn't want to. I'll gather that the skins will be a bit tough when it's time to decant them, but I'm sure the flavor isn't affected adversely nor compromised.

I worked from two recipes: Brandied Apple Rings, in the Ball Complete Book of Preserving and the Ball Blue Book for Brandied Pears. I really liked the idea of slicing them to display their pretty star shaped core. Might not be clever in the long run, but the up-side was the ease. I did one quart this way, two with whole pears, because it was tough for me to cut up these gorgeous pears, and one quart was halved and cored. You probably know this, but a melon baller is your best friend when you want to core halved pears. Scoop it right out!

I find that in my zealous whole fruit canning agenda that's been taking place this summer, the recipe never yields enough syrup. It sort of bothers me, because then you have to make up some more, and there's the hot jars waiting for the furiously boiling water canner. But if that's the stress in my life, well then, that's not so bad, huh?

So, this yields four quarts of pears. You may peel them, if you have the gumption, and it will be all the easier when opening time comes around. I think the peels of Anjou pears might be a little tough. I've heard an apple peeler works on pears, FYI, but I don't have one, so that's hearsay. As I said, you may keep the pears whole, or halve and core them, or slice them into rounds. Put in spices as you see fit. Pears like a whole lot of things like cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, fennel, vanilla, cloves and so on.

6 cups of water

6 cups of sugar

4 pounds of pears

2 cups of brandy

Prepare your fruit. I didn't use anything to keep the fruit from browning, but I didn't peel the pears. Lemon juice works just fine, a tablespoon or two in a gallon of water should do the trick.

Meanwhile, have your hot water bath getting read to boil, and your water and sugar simmering.

The process is to put your fruit in the syrup in batches, to cook until just tender. Anywhere from a few minutes for slices, to six or seven for wholes. The color will change, and if you under cook them that is better, because they will soften in the water bath, and as they sit on your shelf.

Take the hot fruit out with a slotted spoon and place in a large ceramic or glass bowl. When you are done with all your fruit, boil the syrup for a bit to thicken--about ten minutes. Turn off the heat and add the brandy.

Then put your hot fruit in your hot jars (the ones you had in your boiling water bath, prep work, people!), add whatever spices you might want, cover them in the syrup leaving a 1/2 inch headspace, and seal. Process in boiling water for fifteen minutes.

Apricot Brandy

Thank god for Apricot Brandy! Because of my low spirits I needed some high spirits, so I entered the basement larder and decided it was time to see how the apricot brandy came out. I was scared; it had been a gamble back in the summer when we bought a bunch of beautiful apricots from our local orchard market. They were so perfect with their peachy blush and smooth skin. And there were so many! I decided to make brandied apricots using the easiest recipe in the Joy of Cooking. It's basically jamming as many apricots (or your selection of stone fruit) as you can into your jar, adding a copious amount of sugar and then topping with brandy. I used an inexpensive (read: cheap) brand; I think it was E&J. The fruit to sugar ratio is one pound of fruit to 1/2 cup of sugar. Then I wrapped them up in brown paper bags (fitting) and put them in the basement, every few weeks turning them a bit to let them mix up.

I really did this for the fruit but it ends up the alcohol is what I'm in love with. The apricots when ripe were just gorgeous, packed into the jar. I've been seeing some images around (Quince Brandy from Not Without Salt and the Times did a bit on brandied fruit recently, too, I'm sure there's many more), and they always look so lovely. Well, not surprisingly, when they are done the fruit are small and shriveled, and sometimes brown. Some of the apricots are still somewhat orange-y. They don't look like gift-giving material to the uninitiated, but let me tell you, there are worth their weight in gold. I might not give them away.

When poured into a snifter the scent of tangy apricot is mingled with sweet almond and it almost makes you swoon. I think I might have swooned. And then the syrupy liquid is on your tongue and it's got this fantastic complexity and depth, the high notes of citrus and fresh almond mingling with light floral and the heat of the brandy. It was really hard not to drink too much. And I think I may have done just that. But it's so heavenly. I just tasted it to remind me of the flavor (it's 9:20 a.m.) and it feels so good, warm in my heart.

Swoon.