Cooking with cherries
The juicy and grassroots produced cherries from Jerte Valley are just perfect for any of this tasty recipes.
Did you hear about gazpacho, the delicious Spanish tomato soup? For sure you did, but not even in your wildest dreams you imagined that it could be made also with cherries. Learn how easy it is to prepare this delicatessen!
You will need some crusty, hard bread, that you should soak in water a little bit before you start. Then, of course, cherries, some plums, a red pepper, lemon juice or some kind of lemon soda -whatever you prefer-, and, last but not least, raspberry vinegar, which can be substituted with regular vinegar if hard to find.
You just have to remove the stones from the cherries and cut them into little pieces. Then add the plums and the red pepper -also after mincing them- one or two spoons of the raspberry vinegar and the bread. Depending on the amount of bread, the soup will be more or less thick. Now whip everything very thoroughly with the mixer, add the lemon juice and move around with a spoon.
The gazpacho is ready! Let it cool in the fridge or add some ice cubes to it if you want to enjoy it inmediately.
Another non-sweet dish in which you can use cherries is roasted tuna with piquillo peppers. For two persons, the necessary ingredients are:
2 tuna pieces 125gr each.
4 piquillo peppers.
A good amount of cherries (at least 20).
2 handfuls of roquette.
2 spring onions.
A teaspoon of sugar.
A tablespoon of butter.
Raspberry vinegar.
Olive oil, salt and black pepper.
Put the peppers on a plate, sprinkle them with sugar and black pepper and drop the oil over them. Now they should be cooked in the oven at maximum temperature until they are soft.
In the meantime, remove the stones from the cherries and fry them for few minutes in a pan along with the butter. Add the minced spring onions, with a tablespoon of raspberry vinegar, and salt and black pepper as you like.
On the other hand, roast the tuna pieces in a pan with some olive oil. First the side with the skin, then the other.
Now you can serve the tuna on a dish, covered with the cherries and along with the roquette, dressed with oil, vinegar and salt.
Bon profit!
And to finish with, a delicious dessert very easy to prepare: cherry souffle.
You will need:
70 gr of cherries (at least).
2 eggs.
70 gr of flour.
70 gr of butter.
50 gr of brown sugar.
Some mint leaves for decoration.
Now the procedure is very simple. Crack the eggs in a bowl and whip them with the mixer. Then add the sugar and continue whipping with energy. Then pour in the flour, excepting two spoons that will be needed later, and stir the mix until it is homogeneous and there are no lumps left.
Warm the butter in a pan and fry the cherries (excepting few for decorating) in it for 4-5 minutes until they are a little bit soft. Drain them in a strainer to make sure that at least part of the fat of the butter is removed.
To prepare the suoffle, smear the mould with some butter and dust it with some flour so the dough will not stick. Pour it into the mould and array the cherries on top of it. The souffle should stay in the oven for 20 minutes, at 180º C.
Finally, present the souffle on a plate. You can make it look even more yummy by decorating it with the cherries that were left and the mint leaves on top.
Enjoy!