Gooseberry and Sour Cherry Crumble

Of all the desserts I have ever made I was the saddest to not have any leftovers of this one.

Those precious little gems above? Those are gooseberries. My mother LOVED gooseberries. One day after driving home from somewhere far away, like Dallas or something, she walked in the door and said 'I'm making a gooseberry pie'. She made really really good pies. Gooseberries were her all time favorite berry. She had stopped at a roadside stand and picked up a quart. It was a life changing pie for me. But her gooseberries were green. And I never saw them again. I have never seen them in a grocery store. I am not saying they aren't there, but I think they might be too delicate for widespread distribution.

When Thing 1 and I got to the farmer's market last weekend, these plump flirtatious berries were just sitting there. They were liken sirens (like Homer's sirens, not police sirens). I could not leave them there. When I prepped them at home (they have little stemmies on both sides) I tasted one raw. These delicious beauties tasted like raspberries and red wine. They are pretty tart, but man oh man so good. I only bought a pint and that was not quite enough for a pie. So I got took a couple handfuls of the sour cherries that I got before we went on vacation out of the freezer. I mixed everything together with maybe 2/3 of a cup of sugar. And because I was also cooking a huge dinner, I didn't have time to make a full-on double crust. So I mixed up some crumble topping and went on my way. I just plopped the berries and cherries into the pie pan and spread the topping over them. It was very easy and very satisfying.

Crumble Topping
1/3 of a cup of one minute or quick oats
1/3 of a cup of flour (I used brown flour, you could probably use whole wheat, certainly you could use all purpose or white flour)
1/3 cup of brown sugar
1/4 of a cup of sliced or slivered almonds (crushed walnuts would be good too)
4 tablespoons of butter cut into chunks

Combines all ingredients except the butter. Mix together well in a large bowl with room enough for working. Cut the butter and using your fingers (or one of those pastry thingies) work the butter in the same way you would in a pie crust. When the butter is incorporated and the mix resembles coarse meal, pour the topping onto your fruit (the fruit should already be in the pie pan). I suggest starting in the middle and working the crumbs to the sides slowly otherwise it could get messy. Bake at 350 for about 50 minutes.

What an amazing flavor. Really a treat. This would be delicious with fresh ice cream, but I had none. So we poured fresh cream over the top. I might never bother whipping cream ever again. I wanted two bowls of this, but there was not enough for seconds. It was the only thing with no leftovers.

Sour Cherries

Oooooohhhh, there is no fruit that makes me quite as excited as cherries. They are only good for a couple of weeks in June and maybe early July. But the BE ALL, END ALL cherry, the most elusive of them all, is the sour cherry. Not every orchard grows sour cherries, and it seems like they are only good one week out of the entire year. And it always seems like I am on vacation when they are available. I have only purchased sour cherries once before and they were so delicious that I still remember what I did with them, the world's tiniest peach and cherry pie. I swear the store I bought them from only had the smallest containers available, so there weren't even enough to make a full pie. But it was amazing!


Cherry has always been my favorite flavor. Red is naturally my favorite color. And there is no pie quite like cherry pie. I loved cherry pie when I was a child, but as I grew up I realized that no one ever made a cherry pie from scratch. The 'eatin' cherries were too sweet and hard and no grocery store carry sour cherries. So people are forced to buy that horrible gelatinous mess called cherry pie filling. Gross. Sour cherries even during the one week they are available are so delicate that they cannot be distributed aggressively by grocery stores. I have only ever found them at specialty stores and the farmer's markets.


At my farmer's market the cherries arrived last week or the week before but just now was the first time that I saw sour cherries. Fortunately the farm I usually buy from had big buckets of them. But as is normal, I was going on vacation. It was a very inconvenient time for me to be buying sour cherries. The Orchard was selling pints, quarts and double quart sizes. Thing 1 was stealing strawberries out of all the open containers. Thing 2 was in the Ergo carrier trying to pull Thing 1's hair. My bag of milk and eggs and turkey was so heavy already that it was leaving a red mark on my arm. I had so much going on, and I was staring at the cherries. What to do??


I finally took action before they were all gone. I bought a double quart. I was not going to let this opportunity pass me by again.


I prepped them the next morning, took off the stems, cleaned them up and pitted them. Cherries are no longer a hassle now that I own a cherry pitter. It works for olives too. See the picture below.

You just pop the little bugger on that plastic thingy and depress the plunger and you have pitted cherries. I will set Thing 1 up in his high chair with a bowl full of cherries and just let him go to town. He gets every one outThese sour guys were so soft and delicate that the pits came out super easy. I got my cherry pitter at Zabar's on the Upper West Side. I have looked everywhere. Nothing at Target, Bed Bath and Beyond or other local places. I highly recommend getting a cherry pitter and I found some places online. There is nothing else in the kitchen that can replace the ease of this little machine. Whoa. So worth the $8.

I plan on making a pie with these cherries. Or maybe jam. Or maybe muffins!! I have what feel like about 3 pounds of cleaned and pitted cherries. They sit in my freezer now awaiting my wicked double crust or some other something. I cannot wait. Success!!

Cherry Rhubarb Pie

I mentioned earlier this week that I got some rhubarb from the CSA. I have never eaten rhubarb. So I didn't know what to do with it. I looked for a couple of recipes online but they looked kind of basic. I suppose we were supposed to make a strawberry rhubarb pie or some such thing, but I wanted to eat the strawberries that we got on their own. I had some extra cherries laying around, so I came up with Cherry-Rhubarb Pie.

There were several things working against this pie from the start. First, when I cut everything up there wasn't really enough to fill a standard pie pan. Also when I cut the fruit it was around noon and I put some sugar on it, intending to make the pie right away. But Thing 1 was being a handful and Thing 2 needed to nurse and nap, so everything just sat there leaching out juice. I didn't get to make the pie until 4:30 in the afternoon. Whoops.

When finally I was able to make the pie crust, it was so crumbly that I could hardly spread it out. I am not sure if my flour-butter ratio was off, or if I used too much water, or if the butter was just too soft. BTW-I never use shortening, butter tastes better and you know the whole story about trans fat. Anyhow, I did finally get it into the pan and did some minor surgery to get all together. I was right, there wasn't enough fruit to make a nice fat pie, but at least it covered the bottom. There also wasn't enough crust for a top, or even a light lattice. So I took the leftover dough and rolled it out and dotted it on the top. That's why the picture looks so funny.

We had the pie after dinner and it was good. I had several friends reach out to me to say that they loved rhubarb and that I should do this that or the other with my stalks. I am not sure that I understand the devotion to rhubarb. When it was fresh cut, I felt like it smelled a little like dirty laundry. After we ate the pie, I told DH that it tasted like feet. But I don't want to be mean. It was pretty good. And it was definitely different. The rhubarb lent an almost sour vegetable-y taste to the pie. But with all the sugar it was a nice balance. And the sweet cherries were a good idea.

The pie was good. I don't want to offend any die hard rhubarb lovers. I will definitely make this pie again. Because we might get more rhubarb next week from the CSA,but we definitely will get more next YEAR. I am not sure though if I would pull over on the side of a country road and inquire which farm to buy the stuff from.

If any of you have some better recipes for me, please email me or post them. I am open to trying new variations. And I was kind of looking forward to being part of the rhubarb-in-crowd. So I am still searching.