Perfect Pickled Bing Cherries

Ah cherries. Occasionally, in your call for bing-related bliss, you deceive. For starters, life is not always a bowl full of you. No, we've been sorely misinformed. Sometimes life feels more like a rectangular Pyrex dish full of vinegar.

Now, I'm not a pessimist. I am neither a realist nor a dreamer. I like to think of myself as an optimistic cynic. (I've never looked good in rose-colored glasses, but I'm fairly certain a black beret would look just as ridiculous.)

Which is why I'm so in love with these pickled cherries at the moment. If you soak a bowl full of cherries in vinegar you get what I might call "life," in real time. Sweet and sour.

Sometimes life is rosey. Sometimes life makes your face pucker. Sometimes the glass is half full. Sometimes it's half empty. And sometimes, you mix yourself a perfect manhattan—the one with equal parts sweet and dry vermouth—and then proceed to slug it: in which case, whatever was in that glass is gone, baby gone.

Just like these cherries will be, when you determine they can hang with pretty much anything, from your salad course straight through till dessert. They'd even be a fine stand-in for the maraschino cherry in [throat clear] a manhattan. They are the perfect cherry-on-top kind of cherry, if it's not feeling like an ice cream sundae kind of summer. (Perhaps it's feeling more like manhattan swilling season?)

And if you are anything like me, things oscillate somewhere in the middle. So between the sundaes and stiff drinks, try to squeeze in some pickled cherries every now and again. They are the perfect neutralizer for a less-than-perfect life.

Pickled Bing Cherries

1.5 cups vinegar

2 tbsp sugar

4 cardamom pods, smashed

5 cloves

10 pink peppercorns

1 tsp grains of paradise

1/2 tsp kosher salt

Pinch of mace

Peel of 1 orange, pith removed

1 serrano pepper, split lengthwise and then cut into small chunks

About 2 cups cherries, pitted

Combine first 9 ingredients in a saucepan and heat until just boiling. While mixture is coming to a boil, place the cherries and the serrano pepper in a heatproof bowl. Pour the boiling vinegar mixture over the cherries and peppers and let cool to room temperature. Refrigerate.

Makes about 2 cups of pickled cherries (plus cherry vinegar!)

Notes:

-If you don't have grains of paradise you can substitute a few black peppercorns.

-It's best to let this sit a day or two before fully enjoying the, ahem, fruits of your labor.

-For my money (and oddly for my pleasure) I've found the best way to pit cherries is with a large paperclip. A trick passed down to me by my grandmother. She's made a few cherry pies in her day ...

-This recipe was adapted from this one.

It's None of Your Onions

Suffice to say the crazy August sun must have finally got to me: and fried my very last brain cell clean off my frontal lobe. I’ve been doing things that are so out of character lately. If I were counseling a friend, I’d rationalize that by making these decisions she is challenging herself. That her actions mean she is alive and among the living. But mostly, it’s just been unsettling.

I took a long, hard look at the recent path I was on and wondered if it was helping me get to where I wanted to go. The answer was, no, it was not: unless I wanted a vacation in a nice white room with padded walls.

I needed something to redirect me. I needed some food I could believe in. Something with bite, that could hold up to 'the crazy.' Pickled peppers and onions did the trick, that and booking an impromptu trip to Paris.

The French know how to eat and—not surprisingly—how to live. They have known for a very long time that food and life are both better when intertwined. And so it comes as no surprise that their idioms often involve food.

Take their expression, c'est pas tes oignons; it’s literal translation: “it’s none of your onions.” What those crazy French folk are saying is it’s really none of your business, if you please, merci beaucoup.

Only the French can make sounding huffy sexy. And only Boston-based chef, Barbara Lynch, can do the same for a recipe for pickled onions. You may be saying, but there is decidedly nothing sexy about pickled onions. Oh, but there is. These pickled onions are fantastic underneath poached eggs, partnered with cured meats, sandwiched between slices of pan integral; they are even seductive eaten straight from the jar while standing barefoot in your kitchen.

Trust me. The woman can pickle. Her bread and butter pickles appear with many of her entrees at B & G Oysters. If you need further convincing of her culinary prowess, Bon Appetit recently voted her new restaurant Menton (named after a small French village, naturally) as one of the top 10 best new restaurants in the country. But what I love most about Barbara is that she does not mind her own onions in the kitchen.

Some chefs can be hesitant to give out recipes. I recently saw her give a talk and she freely, happily—with abandon even—gave out not one, not two, but nine recipes to everyone in the audience. There will definitely be more Barbara Lynch recipes to come, so be sure to thank her for not minding her pickled onions if you see her.

As for me, the onions and hot peppers at the farmers’ markets are FANTASTIC right now, so I’ll be pickling and planning my trip to Paris through September. Truth is, this is one crazy ride and sometimes the rollercoaster goes off the tracks. But you have to give yourself permission to let it happen and then know how to get yourself back: and maybe even tell people to mind their own onions about it, though perhaps not if they are pickled.

Pickled Peppers and Onions

Adapted from Barbara Lynch's recipe for pickled onions in Stir

3/4 cup white vinegar

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1/4 tsp sugar

6-8 pink peppercorns

Pinch anise seed

A few sprigs of oregano

1 large white onion

1 hot pepper

Heat vinegar, salt and sugar in a sauce pan; add peppercorns, anise and oregano and bring to a boil. Slice the peppers and onions and place in a heat-proof bowl. Pour hot vinegar mixture over peppers and onions and let sit until it comes to room temperature. Refrigerate.

Makes about 2 cups.

Notes:

At first it seems like there isn't enough vinegar for the peppers and onions, but once they sit overnight they give up some water and swim happily in the vinegar. They also stay nice and crisp.

Lynch recommends saving the vinegar to use as a salad dressing or marinade base. She is right. It is killer poured over tomatoes and cucumber slices and tossed with a little oil.

I used a lime-green hot pepper solely because of how it looked (it's okay, you can judge). I think it made the mixture (and life) even better.

You could use a mandoline and thinly slice the onions (which is what Lynch recommended). I was feeling lazy and a little troubled and so a mandoline was out of the question.