My monthly cooking club Creative Crew’s challenge this month was to make a one-color dish. This being the beginning of summer, it got me thinking of cherries. I discovered when I first wrote about cherries (HERE) that Kent was the epicenter of English cherry growers and has been since Henry VIII’s time when he took to having them grown in Teynam in Kent after being wowed by them during a visit to Flanders –– when a king falls for cherries he gets cherries. Cherries were not new to the British Isles since legend has it that Roman legions dropped sour cherry pits (a product of Persia) as they tromped through Britain and so they had been growing nearly wild there for a millennia. A Kentish Red was the first cherry planted by Massachusetts’ colonists.
Photo by Chris Theater (can be purchased HERE)
I decided at the last minute to go over to England next week and travel for a week after going to the Oxford Food Symposium. Such a conundrum –– there are so many places I’d love to see and so little time –– some are just a bit too far afield for a tight schedule. How to decide? Cherries got me to thinking about great places in Kent and noodling around in my handy National Trust Guide I discovered Scotney Old Castle in the cherry capitol of Kent –– it’s a fairytale looking place with a magnificent garden. I thought if anything would get me in the mood to create a red cherry dish, this would be the place.
How about a little history of the place? The oldest part of the estate is the adorable squat tower built in the 14th century by Roger de Ashburnham on land owned by Lambert de Scoteni (hence Scotney Castle). Scotney came into the Darrell family in 1418 through marriage. They tore down all of the original buildings save the tower and built a house around it in the 16th and 17th centuries. Most of that addition was in ruins and torn down during the building of the new castle in the 19th century.
NYPL-John Miller
The Darrells owned the house for 350 years and then sold it to the Hussey family in 1778 –– they have lived there ever since.
The old buildings that remain are a charming visual element –– sort of an antique folly for the estate's extensive gardens. They built the new castle on the hill in 1837 according to an 1878 article by Edward Hussey.
Anthony Salvin 1799-1881
It was designed by Anthony Salvin who was famous for restoring or working around ancient buildings (like Alnwick Castle). He was incredibly prolific and worked until he was 90 (he restored 20 churches and 3 cathedrals and built 34 new churches as well as working on private commissions for new places like Scotney)!
Salvin Writing Table, V&A
He also designed furniture like this 1835 desk for Mamhead House
The new castle is full of Victorian wonders and rooms with winning charms –– love the peachy chairs, the Greek Key desk and that graphic b&w tile surround for the fireplace.
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NTPL - Andreas von Einsiedel NYPL - John Miller |
I have wanted to make this cherry pie from Robert May’s Accomplisht Cook for a very long time –– it wasn’t so much the pie I wanted to make as the filling. That’s a good thing too because a brown piecrust would be trouble in an all-red world (sadly it wasn't as red as I had hoped, the pink cookies took a brown cast in the oven!).
What appealed about the recipe was the muscadine syrup. Muscadine is a New World grape. It would have been a fairly fancy ingredient since the grape had only been discovered by Walter Raleigh and his intrepid band of New World explorers barely 70 years before May was using its syrup (they tried to cultivate the warm-weather grapes in England but were not successful so I imagine the syrup would have been a New World product). The explorers were terribly impressed with the muscadine grape variety.
The “Mother Vine” on Roanoake Island, dating from at least the 18th century
Raleigh’s explorers, Captains Amadas and Barlowe wrote in 1584 that North Carolina was “so full of grapes as the very beating and surge of the sea overflowed them … in all the world, the like abundance is not to be found.” In 1585, North Carolina Governor Ralph Lane said “We have discovered the main to be the goodliest soil under the cope of heaven, so abounding with … grapes of such greatness, yet wild, as France, Spain, nor Italy hath no greater… (so said an article at Auman Vineyards).
I imagine with rave reviews like this, a masterchef like May would have jumped at the chance to add the exotic flavor to his Kentish cherry pie.
I imagine with rave reviews like this, a masterchef like May would have jumped at the chance to add the exotic flavor to his Kentish cherry pie.
No pie? Well, I thought a coupe would do nicely for an elegant treat of pure cherry goodness using the flavorings in May's cherry recipe. Then I thought a cherry cookie would do well but when I looked for a recipe I came up short. All I saw were cookies with chunks of dry cherry or cherry extract or maraschino –– not for me.
So, I made up real sour cherry cookies that are divine with my compote and if not red, at least there's the barest hint of pink.
Enjoy the combination and the yummy muscadine cherries. Although the syrup is available online it was full of corn syrup (blech!) I did get a sense of the flavor. Were I to do it again I would probably make my own with muscadine juice (available at healthfood stores) or make it in the fall with the grapes when they are in the markets –– it's easy to do and people rave about grape syrup as a sweetener for fruit pies like apple. By the way, muscadine grapes and juice are considered a super food screamingly full of vitamins, antioxidants and that lovely resveratrol that keeps you young.
Cherry Coupe based on Robert May's Recipe
4 c pitted cherries
1/2 c sugar
1 t cinnamon
1 t ginger
1/4 c muscadine grape syrup*
1-2 drops Aftelier Rose Essence or 1-2 t rosewater to taste
Cook all ingredients except rose until soften somewhat. Taste for sweetness, if you want it sweeter add more muscadine/grape syrup.
Serve with cookies and/or with cream or ice cream.
*If you want to use something else, take 2 cups grape juice and 1/2 c sugar and reduce by 1/2
or take 4 c grapes with 1/2 c sugar and 1 t lemon juice and cook slowly till the grapes have dissolved.
Strain the grapes out and check the texture. If it is too runny, reduce. If you can't find muscadine, any dark grape will do, especially concords.
Cherry Rose Cookies (makes 3 doz. –– recipe with a little help from Taste of Home Baking)
1/2 c butter
1/2 c sugar (I think 1/3 c is better, 1/2 c is very sweet)
2 T brown sugar
1/2 egg
3 T cherry juice from Coupe recipe or from good canned or frozen sour cherries
2 t lemon juice
1/2 t vanilla
1 1/2 plus 2 T flour
1/4 t baking soda
pinch of nutmeg
1/2 c chopped cherries from the Coupe recipe or from good canned or frozen sour cherries
1-2 drops Aftelier Rose Essence or 1-2 t rosewater to taste
Cream the butter and the sugar
Add the egg, cherry and lemon with the beaters running
Sift the dry ingredients into the bowl and mix for a minute.
Add the cherries.
Roll into 2 - 1' logs on plastic wrap and refrigerate for about 4 hours or till hardened
Preheat oven to 375º
Cut each log into 18 cookies and place on cookie sheets.
Bake 8-10 minutes until slightly brown around edges.
See the Creative Cooking Crew Pinterest Board HERE
) -- they don't have the bottom detail (that you don't see anyway!). I can't tell you the trick to them so you may have to experiment. Mine was a very heavy old French metal model on a hinge with a top and bottom.
