I heard, the other day, of someone who doesn’t like strawberries. Not “could take them or leave them” or even “obviously they’re nice but I prefer raspberries”, you understand; actively dislikes them. Who knows what such a person might be capable of? I always preferred raspberries myself, as it happens. Easier to eat, which should count for something, and less likely, in my experience (which covers many of the PYOs and markets of East Kent) to disappoint than a strawberry, which, when bad (underripe, cold, et cetera) can serve more as a reminder of the essential purposelessness of life than as a berry, which, in fact, they are not. (Like everyone else, I have always assumed that strawberries are so-called because of the beds of straw they are coddled in; this is, apparently, also untrue). Still, if a bad strawberry has an upside it is that it reminds you that strawberries, when good, can be very good indeed; anyone who dislikes them is clearly under suspicion, but so is anyone who declares them their favourite fruit – at least past the age of eight. (Anyone who says their favourite fruit is tomato should be removed from your social circle).
People wax in all kinds of directions about the peach; there is something about stone fruit which inspires food writers to a sort of erotic prose-poetry, especially when it is dripping and ripe, with a barely-perceptible down fuzzing its clefts and its curves, but peaches in particular don’t do much for me. Sweet, yes, soft, yes, perfumed, sometimes… perhaps my taste for them has been ruined by peach-flavoured sweets, which are, more often than not, absolutely foul. Give me a greengage, with its taut skin snapping over its fleshy cells! Give me, actually, a cherry. Cherries are obviously the best fruit. They are bite-sized, with a stone small enough to suck and then spit out; they are red, as fruit should be (except greengages); they are delicious. There is a reason why things come with a cherry on top, and not, say, a nectarine. The best thing about cherries is that they can be sour. Dried sour cherries are a magnificent thing, good with lamb or chicken or pork or baked into a tart. I have never, I am sorry to say, had the pleasure of a fresh one, but it is only a matter of time, and besides, the potential for sourness inherent in even the sweetest of cherries (they need each other, you see; the sour ones pollinate the sweet ones) means that you can happily add your own. Anything with cherry in will benefit from a squeeze of lemon or a splash of vinegar, or, indeed, a huge amount.
If you are in possession of a quantity of cherries and some good, preferably live vinegar, then you can (once you have eaten about half of the former) pit and crush the one and pour the other over it, leave to macerate overnight or for longer, then strain, mix with enough honey or other sugar to make it palatably sweet, and then dilute with sparkling or plain water; this is a shrub, and very tasty it is too. I have incorporated this ‘recipe’ as it were by stealth partly because the quantities I use are precisely that vague (although I could have easily made them up, and no-one would be any the wiser) but mainly because it is not the sort of thing you have to think about making, and set out your ingredients carefully; you just mix some nice things together, and then you have something different but also nice. Fill your kitchen with nice things, among them ripe cherries.
Thom Eagle 