Monday, July 02, 2007

at the market: cherries

My life is all about cherries these days: brandied cherries, cherry pie filling (stowed away in my new freezer), dried cherries, cherry sorbet, sour cherry syrup (a recipe from July's Gourmet). With such a short season, they should be enjoyed--shoved into my mouth as quickly as possible--while they last. My fingers have turned a brownish-red from all of the cherries I've been handling.

My favorite concoction, though, from all of the cherry mania is a cherry green olive tapenade. The tapenade came about because I was wondering whether my new cherry pitter would also make a good olive pitter. Then I started thinking about how olives and cherries have basically the same texture. How would they taste together?

I searched for a tapenade recipe with cherries and olives, but I didn't find anything. A bad idea, perhaps? Oh well, I figured I had nothing to lose but a few cherries. And a few pricey olives.

I always feel a little proud when my kitchen experiments turn out. This one still needs a little tweaking and I have to admit that I didn't keep track of the amounts I used, but here's the basic idea.



Green Olive and Cherry Tapenade

Green Olives (I used lucques)
Bing Cherries
Parsley
Toasted Pine Nuts
Lemon Juice
Olive Oil

Chop everything up (using amounts you find satisfactory). Toss in lemon juice and olive oil to taste. Serve with bread or make a make a sandwich with a little cheese.

3 Comments:

Blogger Lisa B. said...

This seems like a great idea--how excellent. I had some tapenade made with dark olives and some dried figs--a similar idea, in a way, the bitter/tart with the sweet. And we have a refrigerator full of cherries, although I admit my bias is always toward just eating them, preferably cold.

10:08 PM  
Blogger Sarah @ Baby Bilingual said...

Wow! So creative. You should send that recipe into a magazine!

7:22 AM  
Blogger tara said...

Yum! OK, I must get a cherry pitter.

2:55 PM  

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