Sour cherry season is here: Blink and you'll miss it

Sour cherries haunt me. Their opulent color and fresh-juice pop stir something deep inside me. Every year when my daughter Annalee starts talking about the final day of school, I start plotting sour-cherry-season hacks. Curiously, my most vivid memories of my youth don't involve birthday parties or snowmen, but the short, evanescent sour-cherry seasons.

I savor those seasons like Proustian madeleines. After all, sour cherries were one of a handful of hyper-seasonal surprises that intrigued me as a kid. And I was a hungry little girl.

I have a clear memory of my mother's patch of huge August Bluegold blueberries behind our house. I fondly remember her garden, along with a particular basket of hers that I would fill to the brim. I have a vivid recollection of spooning a stewed bowl of Lodi apples (the late-season sauce gems) at a wobbly kitchen bench while gazing out the window at our field of crown vetch gone wild.

I recall the pure joy of finding treasures in my little world: eating violets, licking honeysuckle, things just here and gone.

"It's a wonderful thing, the end of a string," wrote e.e. cummings. Delights like sour cherries and squash blossoms help me not let go.

Momom and Popop's house was on 10th Avenue in Conshohocken. Popop was a plumber, and Momom worked at the Edwards Freeman Nut Co. They had matching rockers and a lovely sour cherry tree out back, a small, shapely English Morello tree, not the common Montmorency variety. Its cherries were as precious to me as robins' eggs.

Such was my introduction to this hydrating and healthy fruit. The annual April blooms generally beget a late June harvest.

Sour cherry trees generally are adorably petite, and rewarding and manageable, too, when planted in the yard of a home-baker back then.

Waiting for sour cherries can be as thankless as waiting for Godot. Birds - early and otherwise - await the day they ripen, then swoop down and plunder. Pick them too soon, and they're too sour; too late, and they lose their tart. Shake the tree, and they'll tell you when they're ready. Sour cherries can be very obliging that way.

Popop would either shake the trunk for us or break off a loaded branch. Maybe that was his idea of pruning. Arms locked and filled with branches, we'd stroll to the concrete front porch. I'd sit on his sturdy lap and spit pits. Neighbors would stop by, we'd shake and break, gather and share. During one Cherry Week, I learned he was more than a plumber. An old women thanked him for digging a grave for her beloved pooch. An old man left a scythe to be sharpened. Popop was half Cherokee, and at dusk, he'd always smoke a pipe. To me, it was a peace pipe.

I wonder now why we never slathered Edwards Freeman peanut butter on sour cherries. If I had, I might today add it to my list of sour cherry offshoots: kombucha, home-brew lambic, compound butter, and vinaigrette. Back then, sour cherries were only for sweet-baking, canning, or straight-up eating.

More should be grown and consumed. Tart cherries are healthy. Indeed, they're one of the healthiest of all fruits - even healthier than their sweet counterpart. They contain one of the highest levels of antioxidants. They're low in calories. They help produce melatonin and fight cancer, specifically breast cancer. Plus, they're recognized as an anti-inflammatory. Momom used to claim that sour cherry juice made her arthritis go away, at least for the sour cherry season.

My neighbor Lewis Barnard, who owns an orchard in Unionville, told me that the 2016 season would be very light; the March cold snap reduced the yield. He knows I am waiting.

Sour cherry trees do not respond well to a late-spring freeze. Though Pennsylvania has a sizable crop, Michigan is the country's sour cherry capital. In Traverse City, Mich., the 2012 season was the worst year in recorded history for Michigan fruit. That region produces 75 percent of the U.S. crop. Pennsylvania may see a similar impact this year. Cherry orchards will appreciate local consumer love.

Ben Wenk of Three Springs Farm in Aspers, Pa., expects three weeks of harvest, hitting this week to June 25. Cherry Hill Orchards in Lancaster has released June 27 as the opening pick date. Get there quickly.

Barnard reckons that next year, the trees will be flush with fruit. When picking out cherries this year at the local markets, he advises, look for those with stems on - that usually indicates they were handpicked. They'll last a little longer on the stem, too. He says commercial shakers clamp on the trees and shake just the fruit down into the catcher. Stemless cherries are more abundant, though they'll probably be Montmorencies, not Momom's Morellos.

To my taste, their sour will taste just as sweet.

Aimee Olexy is the restaurateur behind Talula's Table, Talula's Garden, and Talula's Daily.

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Makes 8 servings

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1 tablespoon softened, unsalted butter

11/4 cups milk

6 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons kirsch

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

6 eggs

Kosher salt

3/4 cup flour

3 cups unpitted or pitted sour cherries

Confectioners' sugar, to dust

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1. Heat oven to 425. Butter a 9-inch cast-iron skillet or baking dish, and set aside. Combine milk, sugar, kirsch, vanilla, eggs, and salt in a blender. Blend for a few seconds to mix ingredients, then add the flour, and blend until smooth, about one more minute.

2. Pour batter into buttered skillet, then distribute cherries evenly over the top. Bake until cake tester inserted into batter comes out clean and a golden brown crust has formed on the top and bottom of clafoutis, about 30 minutes. Dust with confectioners' sugar.

Per Serving: 273 calories; 7 grams protein; 45 grams carbohydrates; 13 grams sugar; 6 grams fat; 130 milligrams cholesterol; 161 milligrams sodium; 1 gram dietary fiber.EndText

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Makes 8 servings

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2 cups pastry flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons sugar

2 eggs, slightly beaten

1 cup milk

1/4 cup melted butter

1 pint pitted sour cherries

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1. Sift flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Combine eggs, milk, and butter. Pour wet ingredients over dry, and mix until moistened. The batter will be lumpy.

2. Spoon batter into buttered muffin cups until about two-thirds full. Place 5-6 cherries on top of each muffin; bake at 400 for 12-13 minutes.

Per Serving: 243 calories; 6 grams protein; 39 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams sugar; 8 grams fat; 59 milligrams cholesterol; 230 milligrams sodium; 3 grams dietary fiber.EndText

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Makes 2 servings

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4 slices of your bread of choice

1/4 cup crunchy peanut butter

1 cup sour cherries

Sea salt, to taste

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1. Toast bread, slather with crunchy peanut butter, stud with sour cherries, and sprinkle with sea salt.

Per Serving (with wheat bread): 458 calories; 16 grams protein; 61 grams carbohydrates; 6 grams sugar; 18 grams fat; no cholesterol; 433 milligrams sodium; 6 grams dietary fiber.EndText

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Makes 8 servings

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2 pounds colorful heirloom tomatoes, room temperature

1/2 pound pitted whole sour cherries

Cracked pepper

Very thinly sliced tender scallion, rinsed in ice-cold water

1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon fruity extra-virgin olive oil

3 tablespoons sherry vinegar

4 slices well-toasted miche, ciabatta, or peasant bread

1 large garlic clove, halved

Handful fresh basil, torn

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1. Cut tomatoes into pretty, bite-size sections. Place in bowl, and season well with salt and pepper. Add scallions and 1/2 sour cherries, and coat with 1/2 olive oil and 1/2 sherry vinegar. Gently toss to combine.

2. Rub toast with garlic and season. Then tear in pieces, and dress with remaining oil and vinegar. Retoss with tomatoes, and plate nicely. Tuck torn basil leaves into each salad.

3. Warm remaining cherries and residual liquid from the bowl for 3 minutes, until glossy. Season well, and pour over plated salad.

- All cherry recipes from Talula's restaurateur Aimee Olexy
Per Serving: 127 calories; 2 grams protein; 16 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams sugar; 7 grams fat; no cholesterol; 42 milligrams sodium; 2 grams dietary fiber.EndText