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Preparing the cherry brandy or ‘Kriekenborrel’ as we called it in Belgium, is the first step towards Christmas and winter for me. On Christmas eve when I was a child, I was allowed one single drunken cherry in a small dainty glass as a treat. This is how memories are made, and how time and time again when Christmas comes, you need certain flavours to transport you back to the past. Nostalgia and Christmas go hand in hand. It is the one western tradition that is still going strong. People prepare things like this cherry brandy and plum pudding months in advance. The anticipation grows in the jars, and by every spoonful of brandy that is poured over the pudding every week.Preserving fruit in ‘Jenever’ which is almost identical to Gin, has been a custom in our parts for many decades. It was particularly popular in the 1950’s when my grandmother was young. Because my mother grew up with it, it was sentimental to her, which is why she taught me how to make it. I still have the last jar of cherries my mum and I drowned in Eau de Vie in 1998. It is quite special, because the jar holds memories as well as cherries. In my kitchen I have jars from 2006, 2010, 2011 and 2013. Some I give away, ladling the cherries and booze out into smaller jars to decorate with a ribbon and the date. They go to people I know will appreciate my precious preserve. Because I part with memories of making them and hope they will be cherished.
My cherries of choice are dark English cherries from Kent. Their flesh is thick and eats like a plum, their juice is deep red like the liqueur it produces after months of ripening. The ones you see pictured here are of the ‘Regina’ variety and grown in Kent. It’s good to see Kentish cherries on the shelves of English supermarkets. This means that the farm will have a set income and that it is worth to harvest the fruit. Far too foo often fruit is left on the trees because harvesting would cost too much. And although I’m not a particularly big fan of supermarkets, not everyone lives near a farmshop or market where you can obtain these beauties and other produce grown on local soil.
In Belgium it is hard to find home grown cherries too, again the expense of harvesting and demand are too high. Most of our cherries come from Turkey. They are usually quite flavourless and dull. When I was a child, we had cherries from Belgium and France in our shops. One particular type, which we called white bellies, were my absolute favourite. They reminded me of the red blushing apple of snow white so I pretended they were tiny apples. You see them rarely these days which is a terrible shame. It is those wonders of your childhood you miss when you grow up. Fruit you got every season which is now only available rarely and at premium prices in premium stores. The farmers wife at my local farmshop tells me that when they go to the fruit and veg market early in the morning to buy the produce they do not grow (they are a dairy farm), they see less and less older farmers selling the more rare fruit like mirabelle plums, sloes and medlars.They harvest them from their farm hedges from trees much older then they are themselves. But as these older farmers retire, so is lost the supply of these most wonderful fruits. I appreciate the farmshop for buying the produce from these old men, that way it is still possible to see more of the season than just what the supermarkets wishes us to see.
What about the future of cherries and other home grown fruits? One of the fears of Brexit in Britain is that even less home grown fruit will be harvested. Most fruit pickers are immigrant workers because English (and Belgian people too for that matter) don’t want to do the hard work. So the question is, will there be an even further decline in home grown fruit? Well… Britain hasn’t left the EU yet and we can’t know now what will happen later. So lets just buy local when we can.
In the 19th century most fruit was picked by the poorest people in the cities. Just like with hop picking, families would move out of towns like London to spend the summer by the orchards. Although it was hard labour, being out of the city meant that the children had clean air and nature to run and play in before and after work. They saw it as a vacation, a working holiday. The money earned would go to the mother, men usually stayed in the towns to work, and the women would use the money to buy well needed items like new shoes and clothes for the children.
The past 50 years 90 % of the cherry orchards have disappeared. Before the second world war there were about 40 000 acres of cherry orchards in England alone. These were mainly in Kent, Worcestershire and Herefordshire.
The labour was very intensive as the trees were very high, too high to cover the crop from the birds. Cherry pickers would climb on very high ladders with baskets tied to their waists. Nowadays trees are kept smaller so they can be managed more easily and trey can be covered with netting to keep the birds from stealing or damaging the entire crop. When you drive through Kent at this time of the year, you can spot the netting. It looks like a giant spider has creeped out of that Harry Potter book to cover the trees in her enormous web.
To be able to enjoy cherries for longer, drowning them in strong alcohol really is the best way.
As true and loyal readers of my blog will know, I have featured a recipe for my family cherry brandy before. This one is quite the same, but using more readily available alcohol and more sugar so it keeps for longer. Traditionally this liqueur should be made with sour cherries, not sweet, but it works just fine with either.
A little news, I am organising two creative gatherings in the autumn. One will be a two day retreat in Tuscany the last weekend of october, the other is a one day in Dorset end of november. If you are interested, details will be shared in the next weeks but you can already email me to be put on the list without obligation. We will be cooking, photographing, styling, eating, drinking, learning and we will also have the most wonderful time with like-minded creatives.
On to the recipe now
What do you need
sour or sweet cherries: 1kg
A neurtal alcohol of minimum 35%
(vodka, jenever, gin, everclear, eau de vie,…)
raw cane sugar: 500 g
brown sugar or mollasse: 1 tablespoon
glass preserving jars
Method
Rinse the cherries well and pad dry with kitchen paper. Remove the stalks carefully without damaging the fruit.
Layer the cherries with the sugar, pour over the alcohol and close the jar.
Put in a dark place at room temperature – a cellar is perfect – and shake every day for a week
Forget about the cherries until christmas or thanksgiving!
Enjoy in a dainty glass or add them to your cake batter (don’t forget the kernels!). If you got some leftover from last year, toss on your ice cream. Also a treat baked into a batter pudding or clafoutis.
You might also enjoy
Cherry tart and prostitution >
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When I was a little girl my parents and I used to travel around Hungary in the summer. I can still remember the warm climate, and the little dresses I wore, many of which I have in a shoe box upstairs. What I also remember is the Bed and Breakfast, back then called ‘Zimmer frei’ in Hungary, which was run by an old couple. The woman looked a lot like my aunt and the man I can’t remember much. Their house was large for Hungary and by a main road, not far from a little restaurant by the river Danube where I always ate a very good omelette for supper.
Our time with the old couple was like staying with your grandparents, sure communication was complicated, they spoke a little German, so did my parents, and I as a four year old strangely enough spoke a good word of German too. They were loving people and love can be shown without the language barrier. Each day we entered our room, the old lady surprised us with a large stone bowl of the most plump cherries I have ever seen. As a child, and a picky eater, those cherries were some kind of heaven. Food I knew, and was so expensive at home that I could never really eat so many that my fingers would be stained in cherry juice.
And every day a bowl appeared, and every day we were greeted by the most loving smiles and gestures by these two wonderful people.
Two years after our last visit to the old couple’s Zimmer Frei we decided to do a detour and stay with them for a couple of nights. I requested it especially because I was eager to see my Hungarian grandparents as they had become to be for me. My parents too had never encountered such kindness and were eager to stay there again too.
So we drove to the rather large Hungarian house and as we parked the car I ran towards the door where the old lady – she must have been in her early seventies – was sitting in her chair.
But while I was running towards her the first thing I noticed was the anxious look in her eyes, and then the dress that she wore. As before she always wore granny clothes, now she was wearing a black embroidered dress with a deep decollete and very large earrings.
Anxious as she was, but really happy to see us, she told my parents that she would love it if we would stay but that she was no longer a Zimmer Frei since her husband had died the year before.
I wondered what the young girls were doing there if she wasn’t offering lodgings anymore, and somehow, while she was showing us to our room and I saw how the house had changed and lost all its granny appeal, I knew. I knew without without having the knowledge of years.
Heartbroken and realising that there might not be a bowl of cherries in our room each day, and hurt by the uncomfortable anxious look in my Hungarian grandma’s eyes we said we’d go for dinner and then come back to decide if we would stay.
The granny had tears in her eyes, and I felt like she was holding on to the summers and the bowls of cherries as much as I was doing. But those times were gone. The light had gone out in the rather large Hungarian house. It was replaced by sorrow, regret, and a need for survival.
So we ate an omelette at the restaurant by the river, and my parents gave me the choice on whether to stay at the granny’s house. Too young to understand what was happening at the house, but old enough to feel there was something wrong, I told them that I felt that it wasn’t right for us to stay there.
So we drove back to the granny’s house, and said our goodbyes, granny still trying to convince us we were so very welcome. But I was feeling so very sad. I could not understand what had happened and somehow I knew that by staying we would not only make her happy, we would also maker her very sad.
She had made her choice, and there would be no more bowls of cherries.
I hope she was at peace at the end of her life, so very long ago.
In her memory I have prepared this cherry tart, inspired by 18th century tarts, some of which you’ll find in my upcoming book. It’s a perfect tart to make when you have leftover sponge cake, that way you don’t need to bake a cake especially. The tart has a pleasant texture, though not like the tarts you are probably used to. Let me know if you’ve tried it!
x R
Cherry tart with curstard and sponge cake
What you need
Shortcrust pastry
- 180 g white flour
- 100g cold butter
- 20 g icing sugar
- tiny pinch salt
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tbsp of cold water
Custard
- 250 ml cream
- 3 egg yolks
- a blade of mace
- a stick of cinnamon
- 1tbsp of raw cane sugar
Filling
- Sponge cake, preferably stale
- 2 tbsp of brandy (optional)
- a punnet of cherries
- 2 tbsp of unsalted butter – or bone marrow
- 22-24 sized pie pan or plate
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Hello you lovely lot, I am sorry for not posting as frequently as I did before. Life just has been terribly busy and choices have to be made. It is wonderful, it is glorious but I do need to find a balance so I can find the time again to share stories with you.
I had a lovely few weeks, I spoke at Europe’s largest Food Blogger Conference, Food Blogger Connect in London and a week later I was the main speaker at a blogger event in Brussels, for those who I have met there, welcome to the blog!
I am getting ready to leave for London again, where I will be living out of my suitcase while shooting an exciting upcoming cookery book. (not mine, haven’t had time for mine!) The week after that I am traveling to Dorset to be a judge in the Great Taste Awards again. Lots of beautiful food and drink to judge and after that some more lovely food at the glorious Great Taste dinner at Brett Sutton’s new place.
After that, it is back to London for a week to shoot a book.
So it is fair to say, the next time you hear from me on here will be august… I hope!
To answer some questions I have had from you guys on social media and via email when I posted my cherry brandy picture on facebook, this is what you can do with your summer fruit! I like to preserve mine, to keep for the cold winter and autumn days, to bring a little sunshine on your table. It is sun in a jar, it is happiness. So when you have a glut of fruit, get your jars out and drain them in alcohol or sugar to keep them for when you most need it, when it is chilly and rainy. Here below are some of my recipes for preserves, and at the end I’ve added some links to other recipes on other websites. Enjoy the summer fruits!
My favourite: Drunken Cherries, or Cherry Brandy.
We call it Kriekenborrel in Belgium and I have been making it since I was a little girl. In fact my oldest jar is from 1998, which is when I started making them myself. I now have a jar most years, sometimes more than one to give as gifts for christmas (oh yes, I used the ‘C’ word in summer)
It’s just a wonderful way to preserve a cherry, you can use them served with vanilla ice, baked in cakes or puddings and just as they are in tiny little delicate glasses.
Cherry Brandy Find the recipe here
Next up is Raspberry vinegar.
The colour of this vinegar stays lovely and red even a year later, it looks the part on your larder and even more pretty drizzled over a green salad.
The vinegar is also okay to drink, but only by the thimble full as it is quite strong and pungent. As you can guess, this is also a great gift to give someone who will appreciate it.
Raspberry Vinegar Find the recipe here
How about a use for those damsons who are ripening on the trees at the moment? I like to make a damson cheese, it keeps for long and becomes better with age. It is the kind of preserve you can enjoy with cheese, especially a blue veined one or a fresh goats cheese as well. Fruit cheeses have been made for centuries, they are excellent to preserve a summer haul of fruit and are wonderful to tuck into. Also lovely when you cut cubes from the cheese and dip them in fine sugar to serve as a home made sweet. These sweetmeats often contained a lot of spices to aid digestion during and after a meal.
Damson Cheese Find the recipe here
When august arrives, so do the Kentish cobnuts. They are a personal favourite of mine as well as of Victorian ladies who used to nibble them from delicate bonbon dishes.
I made a cobnut brandy, and the recipe is still experimental but maybe you’d like to join in on the experiment as it needs some ageing!
Cobnut Brandy Find the recipe here
End of summer is marked by the hop harvest and while hops are traditionally used for beer, they make a mean hop brandy as well. Pick them when they are green, or just dried so that they still have all the essential flavours for this drink. My teacher in beer sommelier school uses a Belgian alcohol called Jenever for this preserve but you can try to use any clear alcohol with a min of 40 % alcohol as well.
While you are working with the hop flowers, rub some between your hands and smell the hops, it made me appreciate hoppy beer better and now I enjoy the hoppier the better.
Hop Brandy Find the recipe here
When going into autumn you will, if you are lucky, start seeing small sloes growing on the whimsical trees. They say you need a first frost before you pick them, then they are ready to bottle, preserve and keep. The traditional way to preserve sloes is in gin, Sloe gin has been a favourite winter tipple for a very very long time and still very popular today. You can also make sloe cheese from the tart little things, just follow the recipe for damson cheese.
Sloe Gin Find the recipe here
Lemon and strawberry preserve by Juls Kitchen, I have a jar of that in my larder and can’t wait to open it!
Mustard by Juls Kitchen, I tasted it on a sunny autumn day in Tuscany, it was great!
Apricot jam by Emiko Davies, just beautiful
Lemon marmelade by Emiko Davies, your larder needs it, your cakes too.
Rose petal jam by Emiko Davies, for the romantic
Seville Orange marmalade by The Wednesday Chef, better be prepared because it will take some months for them to arrive but you need this for your toast
Strawberry Jam by Jamie Oliver, can’t go wrong, it’s strawberry and it’s Jamie Oliver.
Plum and peach jam by Ms Marmite Lover, love the lavender in the jam
I can go on for ages, maybe look into a book? I like Salt, Sugar, Smoke by Diana Henry.
This is it for now, hopefully I’ll be back soon!
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