The last sour cherries of the season. I picked them from our sour cherry tree, trying not to eat too many. I needed two cups for the sour cherry cake. My favourite sour cherry cake, the one my mother-in-low prepares. She knows I love it and so does everybody else in our family. Half of the tray is for me, the others share the other half.
We
escaped from the heat in a large forest yesterday. The excursion took some
hours along a fast flowing river under the shades of old trees and I was
surprised to see new nettles - fresh, soft and young. So I collected some handfuls. No, I did not have gloves, but my craving for nettles was so huge, that I took the risk.
Yes, my finders have pins and needles now and they are covered with tiny red
spots. But it was worth it. Coming home with my plunder, I decided to prepare a cucina povera dish from the Bulgarian cuisine - bean and nettle soup with wild plums. Although this dish consists only of
simple ingredients, it has a rich and diverse flavor. With grassy softness of the nettles, fresh and sour taste of
the wild plums and velvet base of the beans, it is deffinitely something to remember. The perfect warm weather bean dish - good for vegans, vegetarians and everybody else. Recipe calls for crushed beans - the only reason for crushing beans is making them faster soft, if you prefer you can keep them whole.
Sour cherries are one of my favourite fruits. Probably that is one of the reasons I spent the other day around the stove trying two different recipes for sour cherry cake. This is the first one I would like to tell you about. It is based on the recipe for buttermilk blueberry cake I saw in one of my absolute favorite blogs. It does not look very attempting, but it is. You can feel the butter and the crust is crunchy.
