Raspberry Debacle

There’s a story that the Egyptian caliph al-Aziz was very fond of cherries; so fond that he had a servant in Lebanon who tied cherries to the legs of carrier pigeons, who would fly them to Egypt each day for the caliph’s breakfast.

And then there’s another story, an old English carol, about Mary and Joseph walking in a grove of cherries. Mary asked Joseph to bring her some cherries, since she was with child and could hardly climb up to fetch them herself; Joseph responded, peevishly, with “let him pluck thee a cherry that brought thee with child”. At this point the unborn Jesus communicated with the cherry trees and asked them to bow their branches down, so that Mary could “have cherries at command”.

These supernatural and superexpensive lengths don’t seem excessive; cherries are really really nice, in strong contention for the coveted position of “my favourite food”. I’ve happily eaten a pound at a sitting, though perhaps that isn’t really such a lot - compare it, for example, to the mountains eaten by Elizabethan forerunners of today’s competitive eating (recorded by Horatio Busino, an Italian visitor to England in the early seventeenth century). Back in the early 1600s, cherries were sold in London streets still on their branches, and “it was an amusement to go out into the orchards and eat fruit on the spot, in a sort of competition of gormandize between the city belles and their admirers”.

It’s an odd competition, but no odder than “tie cherry stalks into a knot to demonstrate that you’re good at kissing and/or oral sex” (neither of which traditionally involve tying things into knots with your tongue, unless I’ve misunderstood something grievously). If you’re going put bits of cherry into your mouth for competitive purposes, it might as well be the bits that actually taste nice. On one occasion, back in Busino’s time, a young woman ate twenty pounds of cherries at a sitting, outdoing her closest competitor by two and a half pounds, and a character from Katherine Mansfield’s In a German Pension by sixteen:

He sat down, tugging at a white-paper package in the tail pocket of his coat.

“Cherries,” he said, nodding and smiling. “There is nothing like cherries for producing free saliva after trombone playing, especially after Grieg’s ‘Ich Liebe Dich.’ Those sustained blasts on ‘liebe’ make my throat as dry as a railway tunnel. Have some?” He shook the bag at me.

“I prefer watching you eat them.”

“Ah, ha!” He crossed his legs, sticking the cherry bag between his knees, to leave both hands free. “Psychologically I understood your refusal. It is your innate feminine delicacy in preferring etherealised sensations…Or perhaps you do not care to eat the worms. All cherries contain worms. Once I made a very interesting experiment with a colleague of mine at the university. We bit into four pounds of the best cherries and did not find one specimen without a worm.”

This was more or less true; the young woman who ate twenty pounds of cherries must have eaten at at least half a pound of worms in the process. Even now, home-grown cherries are likely to be riddled with the things. There’s no point in examining them for clues, either - the eggs are laid through a hole so small as to be invisible, and any hole big enough to see is an exit, where the fat white worm has wriggled out. This means that cherries without a hole in them are, if anything, more dangerous, since any worms will still be inside. The only solution seems to be to break each cherry open before eating it - or if you’re only a bit concerned, to drop the cherries in water, and throw out any that float as probable worm-harbourers.

Despite all this talk of worms, I’m still intending to get some cherries as soon as I’ve finished this post. Ideally, of course, I’d have them tied to the legs of birds and flown in through the window, but perhaps I’d choose ducks rather than pigeons. For midsummer a week or two ago we had a twelve-course lunch-turning-into-dinner (full menu here), and the duck and cherry salad was easily my favourite course, so having all the ingredients delivered in one easy bundle would be ideal. (Yes, I know I said salads were universally pointless. It turns out I just wasn’t including enough summer fruit.)

Duck and Cherry Salad
(Loosely adapted from an Epicurious chicken, raspberry and mango salad.)

dressing
4 tablespoons cherry vinegar (I found mine at the shop at Kew Gardens)
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon soy sauce
Pinch salt
Pinch cayenne pepper
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon orange zest
1/3 cup olive oil

salad
3 duck breasts (preferably not skinless)
1 radicchio lettuce
4 spring onions
3 cups cherries
1/2 cup pine nuts

For the dressing: whisk together all the dressing ingredients except the oil until thoroughly combined, or shake them up in a jar. Pour in the olive oil, whisking as you go, and keep whisking for thirty seconds or so after you have a homogenous liquid. This can be done a day in advance, and kept (covered) in the fridge.

For the salad, take the three duck breasts and score the skin diagonally a few times, and then again in the other direction, to make a diamond grid pattern. Heat a frying pan over a medium heat, with a very little oil; a few sprays of spray oil should be enough, or a teaspoon of non-spray (the duck fat will melt and provide more than enough, once you’ve started). Put the breasts skin-side-down in the frying pan, and fry for 10-12 minutes, then turn over. Keep frying (turning again if necessary) until the duck is as done as you like it - you can cut into it to check, since you’ll be slicing it for the salad anyway. I kept cooking mine until it was brown all the way through, because I was serving it cold, but if you’re serving yours warm then maybe leave it slightly pink in the centre.

Once the duck’s done, take it off the heat and set it aside to cool; it can be served warm, at room temperature, or cold, though if you do put it in the fridge, take it out ten minutes before serving time to allow it to warm up a little.

Cut the meat of the cherries away from the stone, approximately halving each one. Chop the spring onions finely, then mix them in a bowl with the pine nuts and the halved cherries.

Separate the radicchio leaves in another bowl.

Whisk the dressing again if it’s separated at all. Pour some of the remaining dressing on top of the radicchio, and some on the cherry/nut/onion mix (depending on how much dressing you like; make sure you keep a couple of tablespoons spare, though).

Toss the radicchio leaves and shake them off a little, then lay them out on six plates. Mix the cherry/nut/onion mix as well, and then lay it on top of the leaves (using a fork or a slotted spoon, to let excess dressing drain away).

Rub each duck-breast with a teaspoon or so of the spare dressing, then cut the breasts in half diagonally. Slice each half into four or five slices, and lay on top of the plates.

Serves six.