Orchard Talk

Andy Ross of the Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival shares his personal size cherry pie recipe featuring King Orchards IQF Montmorency tart cherries.

This recipe makes six personal size cherry pies. (5 inch pie tins)

Filling
5 C of fresh frozen unsweetened cherries or three 15 oz cans of tart. I use cherries fresh frozen from King Orchards brand or their canned tart cherries.
1 Tbls of organic tapioca starch or corn starch
3 C of superfine sugar.
1 Tbls lemon juice
1 tsp almond extract

Bottom Crust
1 C of crushed gram cracker crumbs plus some for dusting pans. I prefer Nabisco.
4 Tbls unsalted butter

Upper crust
1 box of prepared crust from either Pillsbury of store brand such as Stop & Shop.
1/8 C of extra virgin light olive oil
1/8 C of superfine sugar

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375. Thaw the cherries and drain them well. Reserve the cherry juice for shakes or mixing with seltzer. Mix the cherries with 2 cups of the sugar, let sit and drain again. Mix in the tapioca or corn starch, almond extract and lemon juice and the balance of sugar to taste. Let them sit for 15 minutes while you prepare your crust and gram cracker crust bottom.

Take your small tin pans and spray them with butter flavored Pam or grease them with butter. Then dust the sides and bottom of the tins with gram cracker crumbs.

Melt the butter and mix it with 1 cup gram cracker crumbs. Take the dusted pans and place the gram cracker mixture on the bottom about 1/8 thick. Press the gram cracker mixture with a spoon until compacted. Place in freezer for 15 minutes to chill before filling.

Roll out you prepared pie crust and use one of the tins as a template cutting out a circle. You should be able to cut out three upper crusts per roll. Take your cherry mixture and scoop it out with a slotted spoon to leave any excess liquid behind and fill the tin piled a little high but not too high. Place the crust over the tin. Use fork tines to press down the edges of the upper crust against the tins. Carefully cut an x-shaped slit in the upper crust using a sharp knife.
Mix the olive oil with super fine sugar so you have a thick mixture. Brush the tops of the pies with the mixture using a pastry brush..

Bake the pies on a cookie sheet or directly on the rack for 35-40 minutes. The crusts should look golden brown not soggy.

Tags: cherry pie, iqf tart cherries, Our Websites, Recipes

Join Orchard Talk every day in February as the King Orchards family, crew and guest bloggers will be writing about cherries: growing and harvesting cherries, cherry recipes, cherry juice, and cherry nutrition news.  We’re calling this series “28 Days Powered by Red,” in honor of National Cherry Month and American Heart Health Month.

28 Days Powered by Red: Day 1

We have a gorgeous winter day today. Unfortunately, I won’t be out much since I am trying to wrap up the year end accounting. The preliminary meeting went OK with our accountant but we have some ripples. Glenn Kole has been doing our tax returns for years. He is retired as a MSU farm economist with extension, and he really knows his farm tax landscape. But, now he is retiring from doing tax returns too, so he set us up with an ag accountant with a larger Traverse City firm. The first meeting went well and we have lots to think about. We are now paying the Michigan Business Tax. Purely ag enterprises are exempt but when you sell direct to the public (farm markets), or business to business (b2b mail order cherry juice) then you lose your exemption. We are exploring forming an LLC to put the mail order stuff under so we don’t lose the exemption on the ag side. We all know the state is desperate for the money!

This winter we have a constant buzz going in the shop. Tad Dowker, a long time cherry harvest helper, graduated from MTU (My alma mater!) and was laid off from his engineering job. Tad and Eric Belcher (our capable mechanic) have teamed up in the shop and are putting King Orchards on the right track.

First they took apart the old cherry harvester and replaced rusted and fatigued metal with lots of fabricating and welding. They made numerous improvements over the original design. Next they brought in the newer shaker that we bought in California last summer. They added numerous features which adapt it to our hilly terrain. We hope to take a shaker head from an old Shockwave Shaker which is very gentle on trees and fruit, and install it on a newer Coe shaker which isn’t as sensitive. This will take some planning and lots of fabrication.

Now they have taken our old pickup truck and removed the body to make the first of two forklifts on the schedule. Both Tad and Eric love “mud trucks” so they have brought their expertise on suspensions to the project and this looks like the best shopbuilt forklift ever. Instead of rear springs we use air bags from semi-truck suspensions. This allows a super soft smooth ride for the bins of apples and cherries. These lifts cost a fraction of a new brand name forklift and they actually fit our needs better than anything you can buy (we make them lower and shorter so they slip under the fruit and branches) The beauty of these lifts is that a worker can easily learn to drive them, they scoot quickly and quietly down long rows and back and forth to the farm yard bringing in bins of cherries (2000 lbs) or apples (1000 lbs).

If there is time we will buy several old school bus chassis and strip them down then add a huge fan to make wind machines. I have blogged in the past about wind machines and we think adding 5-6 more will make us feel more protected.

I have to quit blogging now so that I can think of projects to stay ahead of the shop’s dynamic duo!
John

Tags: cherry farming, cherry growing, cherry juice, cherry shakers, Crop Updates & Orchard Talk, Our Websites, Powered by Red

Ingredients:
2 to 3 strips of bacon, finely diced
3 tablespoons butter or margarine
1/3 cup finely chopped onion
1 cup (about 1/3 pound) chopped butternut squash
2/3 cup dried tart cherries
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary or sage leaves, chopped
3 tablespoons almonds or pecans, toasted and finely ground
3 tablespoons dry bread crumbs
3 tablespoons or more chicken or vegetable broth, if necessary
Salt and pepper to taste (used 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper)

Directions:
Cook bacon in a large skillet until crisp. Remove to a large mixing bowl. Add butter, onion and squash to bacon drippings. Cook 3 to 4 minutes, or until squash is semi-soft. Add cherries and rosemary; continue cooking until squash is soft.

Add squash mixture to bacon. Stir in nuts and bread crumbs. Mix thoroughly. Add broth, one tablespoon at a time, if dressing is dry. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serving suggestion: Use to stuff pork chops or pork tenderloin. This is also a good stuffing for chicken breasts or Cornish hens.

Makes 1 1/2 cups or 6 (1/4 cup) servings.

Nutrition Info:
Nutrition Facts per 1/4-cup serving: 189 cal., 11 g total fat (5 g sat. fat), 20 g carbo., 20 mg chol., 3 g pro., 2 g fiber, 244 mg sodium. Daily RDA values: 100% vit. A, 15% vit. C, 4% calcium, 6% iron.

Tags: butternut squash, cherry recipes, dried cherries, michigan cherries, Our Websites, tart cherries