Cherry Serendipity

  

What to do with a big bag of sweet, soft chewy dried cherries?

First, macerate them in cherry Kijafa liqueur. 

Dried Cherries in Kijafa

 

Now, what to do with a big bowl of Kijafa soaked, sweet, soft , chewy, dried cherries?

It was obvious - toss with fresh peaches and scoop onto a buttery Galette crust.

 

 

  Throw it in the oven.

Dessert is covered. Perfect!

Peach and Dried Cherry Galette

Cream Pastry for 2 Crust Pie

2  2/3  c unbleached all-purpose flour
½ t salt
1 c (2 sticks) unsalted butter
7-8 T half & half

In a large bowl, combine flour and salt.  In a food processor or mixer, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.  Add the half & half, 1 T at a time, until dough clumps together.  Gather the dough with your fingers.  Divide in half and form each half into a ball.  Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least ½ hour.

Preheat oven to 375

On a lightly floured work surface, roll out pastry balls one at a time to form 12 inch circles.  Lay on parchment lined cookie sheets.

Filling

6 large peaches, skins slipped, pitted, sliced into wedges
1 c dried sweetened cherries
¼ c sugar
1 T lemon juice
½ t cinnamon
½ t ginger
2 T cream
2 T turbinado sugar for dusting
1/3 cup slivered almonds

In a large bowl, toss the peach slices and cherries with the lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon, and ginger.  Let sit until the juices start to flow. Place mixture in the prepared crusts, leaving 1 ½ inches around the edges to fold over the fruit. Fold the pastry edges over the fruit. Baste the pastry edges with cream and sprinkle with turbinado sugar. Bake for 30 minutes or until pastry is nicely browned and juices bubble. 

Serve with vanilla ice cream.

Ice cream is drizzled with a little of the Kijafa!

Now what?

Let’s put some cherries with some rice, glazed turkey thighs (we already had a recipe for that) and crunchy celery.

That sounded a lot like a recipe that Meg spotted in a magazine somebody sent her by mistake.

Funny how it all comes together.

Turkey-Cherry Rice Salad

Serves: 8
Prep: 15 minutes
Source: Family Circle Magazine”, September 2013

1/3 c light mayo
¼ c 0% Greek yogurt
¼ t salt
¼ t pepper
2 c cooked whole grain rice blend
¾ lb cooked turkey breast, shredded
1 c sliced celery
1 c sweetened dried cherries
¼ c chopped walnuts
¼ c fresh parsley, chopped

In a large bowl whisk together mayo, yogurt, salt and pepper.  Stir in rice, turkey, celery, cherries, walnuts and parsley.

 

Now for some nourishment. Meg’s beautiful eggplant turned into a roasted vegetable spread to slather on toasted baguette slices. It was perfect with the wine while we followed this serendipitous salad recipe.

 

Ferrari-Carano Fume Blanc

Eggplant and Red Pepper Spread
Recipe developed by Sue & Meg For Saturday Night Specials 9/7/13
 

Serves: 4
Prep time: 1 hour 20 minutes

 

1 1 ½ lb eggplant
1 large red bell peppers
12 cloves garlic
1 t white wine vinegar
½ c Kalamata olives, sliced
1 T avocado or olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Baguette, thinly sliced and toasted, or crackers

 

Preheat oven to 400’. 

 

Wash eggplant and prick all over with a fork.  Place on a non-stick cookie sheet and bake for one hour.  Let cool.  When cool enough to handle, cut in half and remove the flesh, including the seeds, unless they are bitter.  (Taste to determine.)  Roughly chop and put into a sieve to drain.

 

While you are roasting the eggplant, char the peppers and set aside in a paper bag or covered bowl to loosen the skin.  When the skins peel easily, remove as much of the skin as possible, then remove the stems and seeds and roughly chop.

 

Press the garlic cloves.   Put all ingredients into a medium bowl, adding salt and pepper to taste.  Cover and refrigerate for several hours or overnight to let the flavors blend.  Serve with toasted bread slices or crackers.

Our unsolicited and biased opinions:

Because we featured this salad as our main course, we doubled the recipe. And we used turkey thighs, but no surprise there. We also opted to serve the dressing on the side.

Cranberry-Pomegranate Orange Glazed Turkey Thighs

The prep time in the original recipe is 15 minutes which assumes you have left over rice and leftover turkey. Starting from scratch adds about one and half hours, all of which can be done ahead of time.

We used Alton Brown’s oven baked rice recipe replacing the water with homemade chicken stock. It is fool proof and we love it.

As they say, life is just a bowl of cherries . . .