Dining / Cooking

Versatile, healthy cherries cheer on summer

By Autumn Shrum, Florida Today | Wednesday, July 16, 2008 | () comments

A fruit once recognized only as a filler for your mother’s pies can be incorporated into countless recipes, from crisp salads to refreshing lemonade. And now is a good time to explore this fruit’s many uses because it’s cherry season.

Cherries we’re most likely to find in the produce section right now are sweet, dark red and filled with pits.

“The first pick is the California Bings and then we move into Washington,” said Jim King, co-owner of The Produce Place in Suntree, Fla., which recently got a shipment of Bing cherries. They’ll be available for at least a couple of months, he said, along with Georgia peaches and other seasonal fruits.

“Right now, if you’re a fruit eater, it’s time to start buying,” he said.

Rainier cherries, which hail from Washington, arrive later in the summer and are sweeter than Bings, some say. They have a yellowish skin instead of the deep red color most folks are familiar with.

Tart cherries from Michigan are a big part of cherry season (there’s even a National Cherry Festival in July in Traverse City, Mich.), and they’re available year-round in dry, frozen, juice and concentrate forms.

“They have a tart flavor, which I think is brilliant because our American diet is so sweet,” said Wendy Bazilian, a doctor of public health and registered dietician who is an author of “The SuperFoodsRX Diet.” Bazilian works closely with the Cherry Marketing Institute, which promotes tart cherries.

Choosing cherries

When selecting fresh Bing cherries, start by examining the packaging, said Aaron Kruger, the produce manager at Sunseed Food Co-Op in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

“The first thing you want to do is look at the bag,” he said. “If there’s juice at the bottom, they might be going bad.”

Whether sold in a bag or a bin, make sure the cherries are firm and dark in color, King said. “Generally, the darker, the sweeter.”

It’s also wise to choose cherries with the stems still intact, King added, because when a stem is removed, the cherry can start to rot inside.

Tart cherries can be found next to raisins and prunes in the frozen food aisle, and tart cherry juice can be found next to other fruit juices. Cherries also are being increasingly incorporated into cereal bars on the cereal aisle, Bazilian said.

Uses

The easiest way for a cherry lover to enjoy the fruit is, of course, to pop one in their mouth and spit out the pit.

“It’s an easy, clean snack,” King said.

But for those who want to get creative with them, there are endless possibilities. The California Cherry Advisory Board offers several recipes for Bing cherries on its Web site, calcherry.com, as does the organization that promotes tart cherries, the Cherry Marketing Institute, at choosecherries.com. These recipes range from simple cocktails to gourmet-level entrees, such as the Advisory Board’s Duck with Cherries, or the Marketing Institute’s Caramelized Salmon with Cherry Salsa.

There are simpler ways to prepare cherries, too, Kruger said.

“I really love them,” he said. “One thing that we’ll do at the house, that the kids really like, is put a bunch of cherries in a bowl of water, take a potato masher and mash them. Doing that, we’ll kind of work the pits out. In the end, you kind of have a cherry juice. The kids like to put that on ice cream.”

The water that remains from Kruger’s “mashing” method can be added to homemade lemonade for a sweet twist, he said.

Bazilian likes to use tart cherries in vinaigrette dressings, marinades and as part of cooking liquids. She also suggests adding tart cherry juice to sparkling water to create a rich Italian soda and throwing frozen cherries in the blender with other fruits and juices for a cherry smoothie.

If you’re a baker, dried cherries can replace raisins for a twist on classic oatmeal raisin cookies.

“Anywhere you can think of putting raisins, you can put dried cherries,” Bazilian said. “Dried cherry cookies are so incredible.”

Bazilian’s mother-in-law makes biscotti with pistachios and dried cherries that is “out of this world,” she said.

One advantage to using frozen or dried tart cherries or cherry juice is that there are no pits to deal with.

“That’s a key to our diets these days as well,” Bazilian said. “We have to face the fact that we’re busy individuals. We want our health, but it’s got to be easy.”

Super fruit

Cherries, both sweet and tart varieties, are loaded with disease-fighting antioxidants, anthocyanins, which have been linked to protection against heart disease and cancer, and contain essential vitamins. Studies have shown that cherries have cholesterol-reducing properties and may play a role in helping with arthritis and bone health.

They’re also full of melatonin, an antioxidant that helps with sleep.

“They won’t put you to sleep, but they will promote a healthy sleep cycle,” Bazilian said.

Like all other “Super Fruits” touted as healthful food choices, nothing guarantees that cherries prevent certain ailments or cure certain conditions. It’s not a bad idea to try them out, though.

“This is such a good season because we’re all excited about fresh fruit and having an expanded repertoire for the summer,” Bazilian said. “It’s also a good time to look at some of these foods and see how we can incorporate them into our diets throughout the year.”