One of the things we like best about new cookbooks is looking at the “basics” section. Perhaps you might find that odd, because these are the simplest and most rudimentary recipes in the book. Things such as pie crust, vegetable and meat stocks, vinaigrette dressings, or mayonnaise; the very basic things that we use day in and day out. Did you think, instead, of the fancy, difficult recipes, that will wow everyone? While we like those, too, we’re often more impressed with these simple basic recipes, and with good reason.
These seemingly simple, basic recipes are the foundation to making great food, and building or creating the best foundation you can is critical to success. Think about it. If your pie crust is just average, your pie will be just average, regardless of how tasty the filling is. By ignoring the foundation, you’ve limited your chance of success.
With this in mind we looked through “basics” section in Ad Hoc at Home, by Thomas Keller, and found a recipe for Cherry Compote. We happened to want cherry compote to go along with some pound cake next week, so, we figured, why not try this one? As an aside, we have several Pound Cake recipes available.
Cherry Compote
Ingredients
- 1 pound cherries pitted
- 2 Tbs sugar or to taste
- 1 tsp lemon juice or to taste
Instructions
- Place about 1/4 of the cherries in a blender, process on high until puréed, adding just a bit of water if necessary.
- Cut remaining cherries into roughly 4 pieces. Combine with purée and sugar in a medium saucepan.
- Bring to a simmer over medium heat and simmer until the mixture is sauce-like. Remove from heat.
- Stir in lemon juice to taste and adjust sugar, if necessary.
Ingredient discussion:
We would really have liked to use fresh cherries for this compote, but they’re not in season. Sure, we could buy some shipped from halfway around the world, but we can’t imagine they’d be all that good. We figured it was better to use cherries that were frozen when they were ripe. We never recommend using that bottled lemon juice; it just tastes bad. If you’re going to use a pound of cherries, splurge and buy a single lemon.
Procedure in detail:
Purée cherries. Place about 1/4 of the cherries in a blender. You can start by cutting them into pieces, but we just tossed some in our blender. Blend until you have a smooth, thick liquid. If needed, add just a bit of water to get the cherries going. If your cherries are frozen, as ours were, you’ll probably have to scrape down the sides of the blender from time to time.
Chop and simmer. Chop the remaining cherries into biggish pieces. We just cut each cherry into four roughly equal pieces, and went with that. As you work, place the cherry pieces in a medium saucepan. Add the sugar and the cherry purée and place over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, and, stirring from time to time, simmer until you have a nice sauce-like consistency, about 30 minutes.
Add lemon juice. Add the lemon juice about 1/2 teaspoon at a time, stirring it in and tasting as you work. By adding the lemon juice a little at a time, you can taste when the amount is perfect. Now, if needed, you can stir in a bit of sugar, too. It’s your compote, so adjust as you see fit.
That’s it. Easy as can be, and, while we didn’t get to taste it with pound cake (we’re making that for someone else), we did taste it by itself and found it to be full of cherry flavor, a little tart, and a little sweet. We think it would be great on ice cream, too. Another five-star “basic” recipe.
