Farmers and Gardeners are Guiding Us
Our Universal Food Family
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Living Life Well
In the course of planning her upcoming trips to Australia and New Zealand, Cecilia, an Illinois organic farmer and author of The Kitchen’s Garden Travels, added a new travel consideration: the jeopardy of flying across the world in an American aircraft in the midst of the world’s volatility and propensity for war.
Cecilia describes it as “whiplash.” Whiplash, the sudden, jarring changes we experience daily as our country works to find its footing, now fraught with possible physical danger for Americans who travel.
Living her Illinois life and traveling across the world to visit her children and grandchildren, she also tends her families’ gardens. Those of us whose lives are deeply embedded in food culture know the significance of doing our best work for the people we love. Cecilia’s is a remarkable example of how people share living well.
At home, our dear friend, Liane, contacted
and me with a delectable seasonal opportunity: Oregon Bing and Rainier cherries were ready to pick. Off we went to her beautifully manicured farm of cherries, pears, apples, blackberries and figs.I’m as interested in savory uses for fruit as I am in sweet uses. Often, flavor profiles for savory fruit sauces and other accoutrements tend to be deeper and more complex. This week, I wanted both.
First, a double dark chocolate Bing cherry cookie. A common technique in my recipe development is using a spreadsheet of my own recipes and others’ whose recipe development I trust. The point is to more clearly understand the ratios of ingredients (chocolate and butter : flour; sugar : the total weight of ingredients, etc.). I can then determine which ingredients I wish to emphasize for the qualities I value.
The cherries’ resonant, rich flavor had to shine through deep, dark chocolate. I chose a flavor trifecta I knew would be lustrous with the cherry: 72% chocolate, orange and espresso. The result is a thin, floating crust that encases a soft, moist center filled with bits of semi-sweet chocolate and macerated cherries. Perfect.
Headnotes
Several process notes. Every cookie recipe I develop is portioned with a disher and baked straight from the freezer at 350° F. A disher is a scoop that’s commonly available online or from a local restaurant supply store. Restaurants use dishers to portion food. In this recipe, I used a red #24 scoop with a 1-1/3 ounce capacity. If you love the idea of having cookie dough available at a moment’s notice, baking frozen is the way to do it. This is where spending a little more time upfront pays off.
dishers: inexpensive; great utility! 
Two-hundred fifty (250) grams of Bing cherries, rinsed, pitted and halved, were dehydrated cut-side down for 12 hours at a low temp of 105° F. Suggest starting the dehydrator in the evening; check it the next morning at the 10-11 hour mark. They should feel supple and dry to the touch, having retained some moisture. You may certainly buy great quality dried dark cherries as an option!
Melting the chocolate and the butter in the microwave on a low setting is easy and effective. To avoid over-heating the mixture, stir with a spatula each time you check the progress. It’s what chocolatiers and chefs do to control chocolate’s temperature.
Espresso powder. Any good quality brand will do. One of the most cost-effective is Medaglia D’Oro.
Mini, semi-sweet chocolate chips: use any good quality mini chip. I used Guittard. I recommend a mini chip as it scales well with the size of the baked cookie.
Essential oils. They’re totally optional. I love the aromatic contribution they make, and we’ll be talking more and more about them. If you’d like to learn more about essential oils, check out the FDA’s GRAS (Generally Regarded as Safe) list of food-grade oils. I recommend buying a small supply of glass droppers. They’re readily available online. Dedicate 1 dropper per flavor of essential oil. There are numerous quality essential oil producers. Mountain Rose Herbs is one company I use.
The affinity flavors for cherries are: allspice, almond, amaretto, Armagnac, brandy, butter (unsalted), buttermilk, caramel, cassis, cheese (Brie, goat, ricotta), chocolate (dark, white), cinnamon, cloves, coconut, coffee/espresso, cognac, coriander, cream, cream cheese, creme fraiche, currants (red), fennel, figs, garlic, ginger, Grand Marnier, hazelnuts, honey, Kirsch, lemon (juice, zest), lime (juice), mascarpone, meats (fatty, roasted), melon, nectarines, nuts, orange (juice, zest), peaches, pecans, pepper (black, green), pistachios, plums, pork, port (ruby), poultry, raspberries, rose hips, rum, sage, salt, sour cream, stocks, sugar, vanilla, vermouth (sweet), vinegar (balsamic, ice wine, red wine), vodka, walnuts, wine (dry red, sparkling), yogurt.
The Numinous Oregon Cherry Double-Chocolate Cookie
edited from “Baking With Julia”
Julia Child returned in 1959 from France with her husband, Paul, to buy a home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Seeing the American revolution of “convenience” foods (“glop”, as she called them), she wondered, “Would there be a place in the U.S.A. for a book like ours? Were we hopelessly out of step with the times?” The book, of course, was “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” which revolutionized the American cooking world and remains in print today.
I ponder a similar question: Are there cooks who wish to elevate their cooking, to better understand flavor development, to more deeply enrich their lives, whose skills and interests I can help to elevate?
The Confluence of Savory and Sweet
In a general search of sauces in James Peterson’s opus, entitled “Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making”, I spied what I thought might an opportunity: Cumberland Sauce.
Outside of the U.K., it’s a relatively little used sauce even in professional kitchens, but its ‘bones’ intrigued me. It’s typically served either cold or slightly warm with roasts, pates and cold-roasted meats.
I’ll be serving it, along with Umami Marionberry Sauce and Savory Blueberry Sauce, as accompaniments to a roast chicken on July 4. (We’re also doing dry-rub baby back ribs with a mop sauce.)
Rainier Cherry-Apricot Sauce
“And with all this going on - we must carry on. Do you feel the whiplash? Work with it. Keep gardening. Keep cooking. Keep finding local farmers and supporting them. Keep talking. Keep being heard. We are all in this together - no matter the country we are presently sitting in. We are global. You and me. And we will keep walking forward. Looking after each other. Looking out for the more vulnerable amongst us. Keep feeding our families and our friends and caring for our earth. Living a little smaller so our earth can breathe a little bigger.”
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