Recently at the Athens Farmers Market, the topic of cooking with cherries arose twice in conversations with customers. Our restaurant was selling mini cherry pies that morning. In the already shimmering damp heat, what we discussed, wistfully, was iced cherry soup.
I hadn’t thought about that old favorite in years. Now I could taste it in my memory.
When I was a student in the 1960s (please don’t do the math), a family who had fled from Hungary during the brief freedom of 1956, a moment quickly crushed by the Soviet army, opened what became my favorite eatery in New Haven, Conn. The Budapest Restaurant served food as luscious as it was unpronounceable. No matter what main dish I ordered, I could not resist beginning dinner with their exciting cold cherry soup, fragrant with cinnamon and lemon and topped with sour cream. I often finished dinner with coffee and yet more cherries, in a crispy strudel or tender crêpe.
The restaurant used canned sour cherries, which would have been the only cooking cherries available for most of the year in Hungary, or anywhere else for that matter. Canned cherries are, therefore, the authentic ingredient. When I cook with cherries — which until recently I had forgotten about — I still use canned sour (now called “tart”) cherries. These are the dark pink pitted fruit processed in water, not the kind in syrup and certainly not the cherry pie filling. They are sold at some supermarkets, including Kroger, in the canned fruit section.
I had worked out a method way back then to reproduce that soup from “the Budapest.” At home after the hot morning at the farmers market, I found my recipe in our old wooden file box. The yellowing 3-by-5 card carries my younger, and clearer, script. The recipe below shows how I used to prepare the dish.
It should be made at least a few hours before serving, preferably a day or more, and thoroughly chilled. The sour cream is dolloped onto the soup as it is served. You swirl the cream in with your spoon as you start to eat.
Almost any red wine that is not high in tannins will work for making the soup.
A lightly chilled Beaujolais or cold Grüner Veltliner or dry rosé probably would be best to drink with it.
The recipe, using a can of cherries, serves four as a starter dish.
Drain cherry juice into a stainless steel or enamel pan. Stir in water, sugar, cornstarch, plus juice and squeezed-out skin of the half lemon. Add cinnamon sticks.
Bring to a boil, stirring frequently, and simmer, covered, 5 minutes. Remove lemon peel, pressing it to squeeze out any liquid. Simmer soup, covered, 5 more minutes.
Add cherries and wine and return soup to a gentle boil for 2 minutes. Remove from heat. Taste, and add sugar if desired. The soup should be just faintly sweet. Add food color if desired.
After 10 minutes, remove cinnamon sticks.
Chill soup well, preferably overnight.
Serve in soup bowls, with a tablespoon of sour cream dropped onto the soup.
• Tim Dondero is a medical researcher as well as cooking teacher, chef and caterer. Contact him at timdondero@ gmail.com or visit his blog, t-jintan.blogspot.com.