Viens ici, ma petite cherie...

I wish summer would never end, although perhaps its brevity in this part of the world is what makes we Prairie Canadians so passionate about squeezing every last tantalizing morsel out of it.  We sit intently on our decks in the sun, willing the pasty whiteness away and glaring at any cloud with the temerity to block the sun.  Suppertime is but halfway through the daylight, as increasingly sleep-deprived, we stake our claim to overdosing on Vitamin D long into the night, slapping and cursing the mosquitos but unwilling to give away an ounce of the fleeting luxury of nearly everlasting daylight.  Doom is around the corner, and its name is October....or September....or, yes, even August, when the whiteness and the darkness exercise their divine right over the Great White North.

In addition to the blazing light, nature seems to overcompensate on our behalf.  Farmer's markets burst their banks with teeming crowds of the citified, intent on eating a year's worth of truly fresh, truly local veggies - tomatoes whose intensity brings veritable cries of delight, snap peas which were supposed to go in the stirfry but didn't even make it out of the car to the house, giant garlic bulbs that speak boisterous Italian, and berries - berries that burst  like an indigo invasion over tongue and teeth, satisfying the most primal of thirsts....

If you look hard enough, I discovered - you don't even have to spend a red cent to grab some of this for yourself.  For years, our back yard has been quietly but determinedly taken over by a slowly expanding and ever broadening bush.  I had always thought that the Nanking Cherry bush was nothing more than one of those "ornamentals", whose brazen scarlet fruit was primarily designed for small birds and the occasional bear to eat as part of a varied and generally unremarkable wild diet.

Until the day I picked one for myself, late in the summer, after a particularly long stretch of intensely hot summer days.  I have always been a very great and appreciative fan of cherries, this being a fruit which did not exist in my childhood Africa, and which still has me eating large handfuls in fear of there not being any more, ever again.

This particular cherry, about 3/4 the diameter of a penny, was a very pleasant surprise indeed.  It was simultaneously sweet and tart - just the right proportion that induces you to pick some more, which you kinda have to do in order to get a satisfying snack.  They're pretty small.  This got me to thinking - my Oma used to make all manner of interesting juices from the bounty of summer fruit - concentrates which she'd mix with 7-Up for me to make the wildly popular "juice-pop" that shamed any mass-produced drink into submission.

I wondered, if one could get enough Nanking cherries off a bush, whether it would be possible to make my own juice - for juice-pop to be sure, but also for all kinds of other things.

There's only one way to find out.  I started picking.  Five pounds of Nanking cherries later, I realized I would definitely have way more than enough to make some juice.  Here's how we did it:

• 5 lbs. Nanking Cherries
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 litres water
• 1 tbsp. almond extract (optional, but bloody good)

Boil for about an hour or so.  When the cherries are all soft and starting to fall away from the stones, pour the whole pot through a large strainer into a suitably large pan.  Press down on the cherries with the back of a wooden spoon, extracting as much juice as possible.  There will be pulp in your concentrate, but very tasty pulp.  Pour into various juice jugs or other covered containers, and allow to cool, then refrigerate.

There's your base for a couple of weeks of summer in a glass.  You won't believe the vivid redness - all natural, yet incredibly bright.  Don't get it on your shirt, in other words.  Dilute with water, club soda, 7-up, or even straight up on ice.  You could just leave it at that, and get all you need just drinking it.

Or, you could push the envelope a bit, like a sun-obsessed Albertan should...

From medieval times, people have instinctively known that there is a natural marriage between pork and fruit. Pigs with apples in their mouths begat pork chops with applesauce, ham is better with pineapple rings, and so on.  It occurred to us that perhaps the most summer of pork dishes - barbecued ribs - might also benefit from some fruity embellishment.  After all, we had more than a gallon of Nanking Cherry concentrate....

• 2 racks of baby back or side pork ribs
• 5 cloves of garlic, smashed
• 2 tbsp peppercorns
• A handful of chopped fresh thyme, basil, or rosemary - whatever your summer herb garden has lots of.
• Salt - a good handful

Baking rub

• Seasoning salt
• Pepper
• Smoked paprika, if you have it, or chili powder
• Dried oregano or rosemary

Sauce
Mix together thoroughly:

• 1 bottle Bullseye Sweet & Sticky or Honey Garlic Extravaganza or Original Bold Barbecue Sauce
• 2 cups Nanking Cherry juice concentrate

Since I don't have a smoker in the backyard, and my barbecue is propane-fuelled, I have found through some practice, and through keeping my mouth shut and not admitting how it's done, that you can get a pretty decent set of pork ribs falling off their bone right on your plate by judiciously boiling and baking them.

Put the ribs, garlic, peppercorns, salt and herbs into a very large stockpot.  Pour in enough water to completely cover the ribs.  Boil for at least an hour, up to an hour and a half.

Pre-heat your oven to 325 degrees.

Remove ribs from the pot and cut into portion-size lengths.  Dust with the baking rub spices, and massage them in a bit.  Careful, they'll be hot.

With a basting brush, brush the underside of each rib portion with the barbecue sauce/cherry concentrate mixture.  Turn them over and arrange them in a large baking dish or lasagne pan.  Liberally douse them with the rest of the sauce mixture.  Sprinkle with dry herbs and ground black pepper.

Cover the dish with foil, and put them in a 325-degree oven for another 1-1.5 hours.  When they are ready, baste them without reservation with the pan juices.  Serve them with baked beans, corn on the cob, baked potatoes, and salad.  I promise you - the cherries make this a match made in heaven.

What about dessert, then?  Well, the most civilized apparently use fruit sorbets to cleanse the palate.  A Nanking Cherry sorbet would seem logical, after a mess of ribs.  If you don't have an ice-cream maker, maybe go get one.  It also adds considerable meaning to summer, not to mention its great ability to make some mean gelati.

You'll need:

• 3 cups of Nanking Cherry concentrate
• 1/2 cup of sugar (optional - if you like it really sweet)
• 2 tbsp. lemon juice
• 1 pkt. unflavored gelatin, softened in 1/4 cup of cold water
• 2 egg whites, whipped stiff.

Dissolve sugar in concentrate - heat it up in a saucepan and dissolve it.  Add the gelatin and lemon juice, then cool the mixture for about an hour in the fridge, until the gelatin just begins to set.

Whip up the egg whites until stiff, and fold immediately into the juice mixture.  Egg whites give your sorbet (or more accurately, gelato) a nice creamy texture.

Immediately freeze in the ice-cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.  When it's done, empty it into a container and chill, covered, in the freezer for about an hour.  Frozen red-hot summer.

And last but not least - what is summer without a decent drink in hand?  After some judicious experimentation, we found two combinations that showcase not only this lovely little fruit, but also the sunshine trapped inside it:

N-37  (Yeah, I know.  But sometimes history is painful)

• 4 parts Nanking Cherry concentrate
• 3 parts Sprite or 7-Up
• 1 part Light Rum
• 1 part Amaretto di Saronno

Combine all ingredients in a highball glass, over ice.

Dramking Cherry

• 4 parts Nanking Cherry concentrate
• 1 part Drambuie

Serve in a highball glass, on the rocks.

(I hate winter).