Food tips

The pleasure of fresh cherries is fleeting, so while there may be nothing better than eating them soon after they are picked, if you want to enjoy them year round, canning is the answer. This year I decided to make bourbon cherries from the wonderfully sweet cherries kindly sent to me by the Northwest Cherry Growers as part of the “Canbassador” program. They are terrific in cocktails but also spooned over vanilla ice cream.  This year I finally bit the bullet and bought a canner, it's a small one, it holds 7 pint jars which is just fine for me. Over the years I’ve accumulated a number of canning accoutrement—the jar lifter, the jar funnel and the lid lifter. I use a variety of jars, but am particularly fond of the Ball®  Sharing Jars I received from Ball® Home Canning . Designed for gifting, the company that produces them makes a donation to Feeding America for every package purchased (up to $150k).  This year I used a recipe from Ball but I’ve expanded the recipe...

Chef Rachelle Boucher shows off our cherry jam If you’ve been to the store or maybe the farmers market recently you might have seen cherries. The sweetness of bing cherries is both intense and fleeting. Cherries don’t last long after being picked, unlike apples or oranges. That's why I'm glad to be a part of the Canbassador program. The past few years I’ve received a crate of fresh sweet cherries from Northwest Cherry Growers . Every year I experiment preserving something different. I’ve prepared cherry barbecue sauce , canned cherries for pie, put up bourbon cherries, made cherry  vanilla  shrub and even dried and frozen cherries. This year I decided to make cherry jam. It turned out to be a very special cooking experience for me because I wasn’t in my kitchen, but over at the Miele showroom in San Francisco, with my pal Chef Rachelle Boucher. She kindly invited me over to do a little cooking. To be honest, working with Miele appliances will spoil you. Here’s how it went an...

I’m happy to once again be participating as a Canbassador. I received some sweet dark red cherries that are as delicious as the season is fleeting. Preserving them is the best way to savor them a little bit longer. Last year I canned some cherries with bourbon. I can’t find the recipe I used and frankly I put the jars so far back in my pantry that I forgot about them until a couple of weeks ago. I just opened the first jar and they turned out to be delicious. I probably got the idea from SweetPreservation.com . This year I used my cherries to make one batch of cherry pie filling and jars of cherry barbecue sauce. I looked at a couple of recipes, but mostly my recipe is adapted from a recipe from Taste of Home magazine. While the technique is the same, I switched up the seasonings, decreased the sugar and blended it smooth. The sauce is really good on pulled pork. You can try it with this super easy  recipe I developed for preparing it in the slow cooker. But it would also be ...

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...