Though I am fairly adventurous in terms of the fare I attempt, I don't feel as though I have fully forayed into the world of cooking. This is because I rarely ever "invent" any dishes. I am excellent at following a recipe, I have internalized many complimentary ingredients, and I can eyeball measurements more accurately than a year ago, but I rarely throw something together off the top of my head. I want that to change: I want to be able to truly understand food at a level where the fear of failure, and the excitement of surprising tastes and textures by my own hand, is something I experience in the kitchen at least once a week.
I gave this dare a try Sunday night. In the December issue of Bon Appetit I spotted a page with a lustrous photo of a Manhattan. Next to the cocktail the magazine promotes a boutique batch of bourbon vanilla cocktail cherries, made by Barker & Mills at thebostonshaker.com. What a great Christmas present for...myself, I think, but this product truly is boutique: hand-pitted and seasonal, the business sold out (presumably months ago), and there won't be any more twelve-dollar jars until next autumn. So place your order now! the website proclaims.
But I want these cherries yesterday. I bought Javier an early Christmas present of Bulleit rye whiskey that's sitting in our cabinet just waiting to make a yummy Manhattan. And I want to try something new. So on our trip to the grocery store I buy a half-pound bag of cherries, some Gallo sweet vermouth, and Madagascar bourbon vanilla beans. At home I pit the cherries and muck up my hands with their red. I put the cherries in a saucepan with sugar, a bit of fresh squeezed orange juice, and half a vanilla bean split and scrapped so that the microscopic beans cling to the knife and my fingertips, and eventually get simmered in the juices of the cherries.
The result is cherries that taste like the innards of a fresh cherry pie, with the heavenly smell of the vanilla. The cherries are good enough to eat directly, or to place atop Javier's ice cream. And, as seen below, they compliment a Manhattan quite nicely.
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| Cherries, sugar, bourbon vanilla bean, orange juice |
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| Manhattan with vanilla bourbon cherries, stirred |
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