Our garden is full of fruit, which makes me very happy.
For example, this year I learned how invasive raspberry plants can be. I doubled the area of the plants on one side of my backyard, and this year’s harvest was nearly two pints per day at its peak. Every morning when the raspberries are growing, I pick a berry as soon as I have my coffee and put it right into my bowl of yogurt and granola for breakfast.
On the other side of the fence, the fig tree is finally starting to look like a tree, and the plum tree in the front yard has grown by leaps and bounds — this was our first year with a (modest) plum harvest, but the peach tree across the sidewalk is poised to match or even surpass last year’s impressive harvest.
Get the recipe: Cherry Gazpacho
And then there are the cherry trees. There are two, one a little stunted, the other growing well. Last year, when the dozens of little green balls started to turn red, I started to make a plan, closely watching the fruit ripen day by day. Then one morning, I went to the backyard and the cherry trees were gone without a trace. There were no stems or seeds in the ground to prove that squirrels or birds had done it. It was as if they had never been there in the first place. Was I just noticing?
This spring, the big trees blossomed like the Tidal Basin, and when the cherries were ripe, I picked them before the animals did. The yield wasn’t huge, about 2 pounds, but I had enough to freeze for a pie or two this summer. But the problem was, I forgot to tell my husband, Carl, that these weren’t the eat-with-your-hands kind he was hoping for. “They’re too sour!” he said. And he was right. For bakers, sour cherries are my favorite because it’s easy to create the balance of sweet and sour that works for you and your palate.
This fruit has made my dreams come true just when I had been neglecting my vegetable patch, making excuses that I was too busy with work, parenting and a book project to do the planting, watering and weeding that annuals require. I hadn’t even gotten around to planting my tomato seedlings and now with the weather turning scorching hot, I missed my chance.
That meant I missed the chance to make one of my favorite tomato dishes: gazpacho. Gazpacho is an easy, versatile, no-cook dish that’s exactly what I’m after right now. But just as you can make sour cherries sweet, you can also make sweet cherries savory. On a particularly lazy day, I had a bunch of supermarket cherries in the fridge to snack on, so I thought I’d give gazpacho a try.
I’d love to say I’ve been working on testing and tweaking this recipe for weeks, but the truth is, I swapped out the cherries for tomatoes and it worked wonders. The most time-consuming part was removing the pits from the cherries, but it only took about 10 minutes. (Once I ran out of cherry pitter, I started making it with my fingers, which is probably the quickest method I’ve ever used.) I then added the ingredients I always add to gazpacho: cucumber, red pepper, garlic, olive oil, sherry vinegar, salt, and some ice to keep it cool. I set aside some of the vegetables for garnish, added a little mint, drizzled in some olive oil and had Carl taste it.
He took a sip, looked at me, and smiled. “We should have a dinner party,” he said. I’d never heard those words come out of his mouth. “So that you can make this again.”
Although I have not yet hosted such a gathering, I have made gazpacho many times using cherries purchased from the farmers market, the grocery store, or even the frozen food section. (The cherries need some time to thaw before or after making the gazpacho.)
I hope that one day it will be easier to make gazpacho. I promised Karl that I will. I plan to remove the large dying trees in the garden by next spring to create a sunny spot and plant some more cherry trees. I’m sure the cherry blossoms will be sweeter this time.
Get the recipe: Cherry Gazpacho
