Erica De Mane

Recipe below: Cherry Torta with Lemon Verbena

Cherries are amazing—in form, in taste, in color. After decades of just eating cherries straight, I realized that I hardly ever cooked with them. Why? Because they usually need to be pitted. Not having come from a baking family, I never knew cherry pitters existed until I started cooking professionally. Even then I never used one. And I never bought one to try. Why? Because I never believed it would work. But it does work. It’s like a miracle. It pops the pit right out without mutilating the fruit. Incredible.

So now I’ve finally got a cherry pitter, and the first thing I made is a clafoutis. I know traditionally you’re supposed to keep the pits in for clafoutis, but that always seemed stupid to me, so over the years I made the custardy thing with everything but cherries, even once with olives, which, perversely, I did pit, but I did that by hand, easy compared with pitting cherries by hand. But, boy, a pitted cherry clafoutis is really good.

And then a few days ago I moved on to a pitted cherry torta. The style of this tart and its technique I learned about many years ago from a recipe in one of Patricia Wells’s Provence books.  I was drawn to it chiefly because the dough was a pat-in-the-pan cookie type. No rolling, no chilling. Her recipe, I believe, called for apricots. I’ve made so many improvisations on it in the last decade that I can no longer remember what the true, first version was, but this rendition has morphed into my standard.  You can do it with other types of fruit, but pitting the cherries is more than half the fun.

Note: Lemon verbena leaves can be a bit tough, so if I’m not planning to strain them out of the sauce, I mince them, as I did here.

Cherry Torta with Lemon Verbena

You’ll want a  9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom.

For the cherries:

2 pints sweet cherries
1 tablespoon sugar
A splash of limoncello

For the crust:

8 tablespoons unsalted butter
½ cup sugar
1 teaspoon limoncello
1 teaspoon vanilla
A pinch of salt
1½ cups regular flour
A handful of blanched almonds, finely ground

For the cream:

¾ cup crème fraîche, at room temperature
1 extra large egg
1 tablespoon limoncello
½ teaspoon vanilla
The grated zest from 1 small lemon
6 or 7 lemon verbena leaves, minced
3 tablespoons powdered sugar, plus more for garnish
1 tablespoon of regular flour

Pit the cherries with a cherry pitter (see how tidy it is?). Stick them in a colander sitting over a bowl, sprinkle them with about a tablespoon of sugar and a splash of limoncello, and let them sit for about an hour so they can let off excess juice (save the juice to add to a vodka and soda, a little bonus for the cook).

Melt the butter in a small sauce pan, and then let it cool.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Pour the butter into a medium-size bowl. Use your fingers to wipe the remaining butter out of the pan, and grease your tart pan with it.

Add the rest of the crust ingredients to the bowl, except for the almonds, and mix them together until you have a moist crumbly mass. If it seems dry, add a few more drops of limoncello. Press the mass into the tart pan. It should make a quite thin crust. Stick the tart pan in the oven for about 15 minutes, just to set the crust a bit. It should get a little puffy and lightly golden at the edges. Sprinkle the almonds evenly inside the crust.

Put all the ingredients for the cream in a food processor, and pulse a few times until they’re well blended.

Arrange the cherries in the tart pan in one layer. If any don’t fit, eat them. Starting in the middle of the tart, slowly pour the cream over the cherries, taking care not to pour any over the edge of the crust (if by chance it looks like you have too much, just hold some back).

Bake until the crust is lightly browned and the cream has set, about 35 to 40 minutes.

Let the tart cool, and then sprinkle it with powdered sugar.