Food is Food

Once again, I’m a Canbassador. That means I receive a couple shipments of stone fruit, more than enough to preserve, and I share my results and recipes with you. I already received a large box of dark red cherries and will be working on peaches next. Dark red cherries have an intense flavor, they hold up well with other strong flavors and with that in mind I made two different recipes--Bourbon Cherries and Cherry Vanilla Balsamic Shrub.

I’m afraid I didn’t pay as much attention to the recipe for Bourbon Cherries as I should have, and they will need four weeks to “settle" so I will not be trying them for bit longer. I also froze some cherries, which is very easy to do. I just washed and pitted them and put them in the zip top bag, and froze it as flat as I could. The cherries don’t seem to have stuck to together. And I dried a small batch of cherries in my toaster oven, but it took a very long time and I’m not sure I’d do it again.

By the way, if you have a large amount of cherries to pit, I highly recommend this pitter that cleanly and easily pits 6 cherries at a time! It's a bit pricey, but definitely worth it to avoid the mess and hassle when you have lots of cherries to pit. 

The other recipe I made was a shrub. As you may recall, shrubs are vinegar based drinks, often made with fruit. Making shrubs is a great way to use fruit that’s not perfect. The riper the fruit the better. Basically you combine fruit with sugar and water, then let it sit for a while then add vinegar. You can also add aromatics. This was my first experiment and it turned out rather well.  Once you make a shrub the easiest way to serve it is with bubbly water, but it’s good in cocktails and to flavor hard sparkling cider. 

The cherries leftover from making the shrub have a kind of pickled flavor since they were sitting in a vinegar solution for a full week. They are great as an accompaniment to cheese or in green salads. I recently made a salad with hot smoked salmon, red onions and avocado and the shrub cherries added just the right tangy note. 

Cherry Vanilla Balsamic Shrub 

Ingredients

2 cups sugar
1 cup water

2 cups vinegar--I used a pleasing combination of balsamic and Champagne vinegar

1-2 vanilla beans, sliced open, end to end

Years ago I wrote about Monet’s Palate, a charming film narrated by Meryl Streep. It delves into the life of Monet at his home in Giverny. Monet’s passions were painting and gardening, but he also clearly enjoyed the pleasures of the table—eating, drinking and entertaining guests. A new book, Monet’s Palate Cookbook is less about historical and sometimes antiquated and inaccurate recipes left behind by his cook, and more about his life in Giverny. It covers his approach to gardening, eating and entertaining with plenty of recipes of course. 

The book begins with his passion for good food, then moves seamlessly into his kitchen garden and many of the fruits and vegetables that were grown at the time, as well as the specific ones that were grown in his garden and details about how they were propagated. But the majority of the book is dedicated to recipes. The recipes are inspired by Monet’s kitchen garden at Giverny, but fresh and modern. Some of them refer to favorite dishes served to artists of the day—like bouillabaise for Renoir and others are from places he traveled to such as the Yorkshire Pudding from the Savoy Hotel in London. Finally there are recipes from famous chefs like Michel Richard and Anne Willan, inspired by his kitchen notebooks. 

All photos by Samantha Okazaki

Well, "veggie week" at the Today Show has come and gone, and I may have converted Carson (and Savannah) a teeny, tiny bit with my greek yogurt eggplant dip (however it's true, eggplant is technically a fruit... whatevs).  If you missed yesterday's segment, or want the recipes (plus a delicious bonus stuffed eggplant recipe), check everything out here!

AND, I'll be back on TODAY on Monday, baking up something summery and sweet.

Have great weekends!

(photo by Samantha Okazaki)