Sour Cherry Time

I go to the Evanston Farmer's market each week looking for the season's best. My favorite time at the market is the 3 weeks or so when the sour cherries are available. Sour cherries are not sold in regular grocery stores. They are too delicate and perishable to be handled by the big supermarkets. The bright red cherries are a little soft, not hard like a good Bing cherry. They will need to be stemmed and pitted before you make a pie. It is truly a labor of love. And love it is when you have a forkful of the sweet-tart cherry pie. The recipe I use is a classic version from Fine Cooking #65. It is written as a lattice-pie. While I enjoy the look of lattice, in the end it is less crust than a double-crust. We prefer more crust, so I just do a regular top.

These cherries freeze well. So after you pit them, you can freeze them for an out of season pie.

Trader Joe's Ravioli

I'm really enjoying these Portabella ravioli from Trader Joe's. The ravioli filling is really flavorful and includes provolone cheese. Here I've made them with a sage walnut cream sauce - a classic combination. Although this dinner is somewhat improvised (i.e. no recipe,) I give credit to my gal, Deborah Madison and her wonderful books for planting the idea in my head.

Pizzahh ...

I love Marguerita pizza: fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and basil on a crispy crust. Lately, I've been playing around with my pizza dough recipe. This one is from Bread Baker's Apprentice, a book held in high regard by the bread bakers that I know. The recipe does turn out a nice dough (and crust,) but it is somewhat sticky and must be started a day in advance. I don't think the results are that much better than my usual recipe (from Fine Cooking, of course) which can be made the day of cooking and is much, much more user friendly.

Really though, good results are due to the hot pizza stone (and quality toppings) and not the dough. You could use store-bought pizza dough and it would work fine.

Tomato candy

Slow roasted, a grape tomato becomes a wonderful thing. My technique is to halve them, place them cut-side up on a parchment-lined baking sheet, and drizzle them with olive oil and kosher salt. Then I slow roast them in a 250 oven for 2-3 hours, until they look all shrively, like this.

Let them cool and then eat them on a salad, in a pasta or just out-of-hand, like me. They turn as sweet as candy and they're delicious. If I make them for a recipe, I need to careful about snacking on them because it is so easy to eat them all. By the way, cooked tomatoes are better for you than raw. So when those summer tomatoes come in, try my method.