Kim's Cooking and Gardening

When we planted our tree rows for soil and moisture conservation, I knew we had to have a row of chokecherries. Chokecherries are found in most of the United States except for the southern states. They are small, extremely tart, and you pick them in mid to late August when the sun is beating down on you because the bushes aren’t tall enough for shade and your hands get all purple and sticky. That’s the downside.

The upside is how your kitchen smells when you wash the chokecherries, put them in a saucepan, cover with water, and cook them till they’re soft to release the juice. One of the absolutely most wonderful smells of the summer. Truly.

In olden times, Native Americans used chokecherries to make some kinds of pemmican. They didn’t have sugar. Instead of sugar, they mixed buffalo or elk, fat, and dried pounded chokecherries together, dried the mixture and had a food staple that lasted several weeks.

For our family, every summer, I make chokecherry syrup and chokecherry jelly. It’s a beautiful dark purple jelly and heavenly on toast. This year, however, I thought that there ought to be something else I could do with the buckets of chokecherries I picked. Since pemmican is out, I experimented with a chokecherry reduction sauce for pork, chicken or wild game. This is what I came up with. We were tempted to eat just the sauce without the meat, but we put the meat under it anyway to get the sauce into our mouths.

CHOKECHERRY REDUCTION
About 2 c. chokecherries
In a saucepan, just cover with water, bring to boil, simmer about 15 minutes. Mash occasionally with potato masher. Strain through several layers of cheesecloth. Should yield about 1 c. juice or a bit more.

In small frying pan:
1 tbs. olive oil
1 minced clove garlic
About ¼ c. chopped onion
Sauté 5 minutes.
Add ½ c. strained chokecherry juice
1 tbs. balsamic vinegar
1 tbs. minced fresh rosemary
Cook and stir 10-15 minutes till liquid is reduced. I would double this for more than 3 people.

If you want to try chokecherry jelly, this is Grandma’s recipe and is still the best ever.

CHOKECHERRY JELLY
Chokecherries – lots or at least 4 cups
½ c. lemon juice
Water to cover chokecherries
4 ½ c. sugar
1 pkg. pectin
Wash chokecherries. In large kettle, add water and chokecherries. Simmer till they lose most of their color. Mash with potato masher and inhale the fumes. Remove from heat. Inhale again. Strain through a strainer, throw out the seeds. Strain again through cheesecloth. Then, I like clear jelly, so I strain again through a clean flour sack dishtowel. You’ll have to throw that out too unless you like dirty purple dish towels even after washing them. Back to the jelly: measure 3 c. juice and add lemon juice. Add pectin, stir, and bring to full boil. Add sugar, bring to full boil and boil hard 1-2 minutes. One minute if you like a tender jelly. Two minutes if you like it to be pretty firm. Remove from heat, skim, ladle into sterile jars. Process in a boiling water bath 10 minutes. Eat it in the winter when you long for a taste of summertime. Eat some now too.