A bowl of cherries
"Oddly enough in a world where seasons of fruit and vegetables have broken down completely, where many are available much of the time, the season of cherries always seems very short, gone before we have made the most of it." Jane Grigson
One of my fellow students at my Italian class gave us all a small bag of cherries to wish us a happy Christmas. I devoured them all for lunch a day or so later, because I just adore cherries.
Jane Grigson wrote that statement about the scarcity of cherries way back in 1982 but amazingly it's still true. Well I guess if you looked hard you might be able to find them all year but they would be horrendously expensive. Not that they are ever cheap. They are here in Australia at Christmas time and have therefore become a bit of a feature at Australian Christmases. Hence their appearance as a feature in the latest Coles Magazine. Our wedding anniversary is a few days before Christmas and at our Ruby Anniversary I served a huge bowl of them for dessert at our party.
And that was an idea that I got from one of our most memorable meals in France. We and our friends had just arrived at our house for the week, in a small village called Siran just north of the Canal du Midi near Carcassonne. We had stayed there before and had had a memorable and amazingly inexpensive meal in the next village of Pépieux at the local hotel. So we decided to go there again and went to book a table. It was a really hot day and so Madame said that she would just do steak and chips. Which was fine. But in the end she decided to butterfly a lamb leg I think and roast that instead. The entrée was a home-made pork terrine from their own pigs, then we had the lamb, some chips and a salad, a large platter of cheese and then to finish it off we were presented with a huge glass bowl of cherries sitting on ice. It was perfect. A very Elizabeth David meal and one that stands out in all our memories I think. I cannot remember how much it cost but it was ridiculously cheap. So for our wedding anniversary I did the same - though definitely not as cheaply.
France, to my mind is the home of cherries, which is ridiculous because, of course, they are grown all over Europe. But we are generally in France in May/June and this is when the cherries are in season. You will find them being sold by the side of the road. Several of the houses we have rented over the years have been blessed with cherry trees in the garden, which we have been invited to enjoy. And indeed we did gorge ourselves on cherries. Over and over again. One year they must have had rain and so the cherries had split. They still tasted good though and brought to mind the phrase 'bursting with goodness'. Not good for the farmers though.
This last trip we did not see so many for some reason - but we did see some - like this tree in the village of Saissac, with its beautiful castle in the background. And it was here that we saw some people picking them too. For they need to be picked by hand - at just the right moment and rushed to market - which is why you see so many of them being sold at the side of the road. It is also one of the reasons they are so expensive.
For they are never cheap. My younger son, when a small boy would not eat fruit until he discovered cherries. That would be right I thought. Trust him to choose the most expensive fruit.
Their scarcity is yet another reason why we tend not to do anything with them other than eat them as they are. The other reason is the pips. Very tedious to remove the pips though one writer found the process 'oddly therapeutic'. Actually opinion seems to be divided as to whether it's good to leave the pips in or remove them. If you leave them in you have to keep spitting out the pips as you eat - but then you get a pile of pips that you can play that game of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or He loves me, he loves me not - if you are a child that is. I doubt that many adults would do this. But is it any worse than eating olives with pips or shelling pistachios, or eating chicken on the bone?
You can do lots of things with the cherries if you can be bothered to depip them. Ice cream, pies and tarts, cherry brandy and soufflés seem to be the favourites. But there are lots of other ideas out there as well - and true to form Coles Magazine had a couple of interesting ones - a cherry, pancetta and goat's cheese pizza, and a cherry rosé sangria. Not sure about the pizza but it could be interesting. I saw a cherry salsa somewhere too.
There are a few sayings about cherries and festivals too. The Japanese in particular celebrate the cherry blossom - it's a huge thing and represents the beauty and shortness of life. For the blossom. like the cherries, is in bloom for a very short time.
Life is just a bowl of cherries - it's a song dating back to 1931. It's again on the theme of life being short but to be enjoyed, and there might also be some rotten ones lurking in the bowl.
To cherry pick - means to pick the best one from a group or bunch. This is because of the cherry picking need to only pick the ripe ones and to leave the others behind. Cherries do not ripen once picked. They just gradually go off.
Cherry lips - well it's obvious isn't it? Shakespeare amongst many used this metaphor.
Cherry ripe - another song derived from a street hawker's call. Unripe cherries are not nice.
The cherry on the cake or on the top - something to finish off something which is already good. The best of the best I suppose
A second bite at the cherry - A second chance.
I think virginity is sometimes referred to as the cherry as well. Something precious.
There are lots of recipes on the net if you want to do something with cherries. Me I just eat them. Though I did pickle some sour ones once.
Charles V of France loved them too. In 1364 he planted 1125 cherry trees in his gardens in comparison to 115 apple, 100 pear and 150 plum. I wonder if they are still there.
