A Cherry Day

A few days back, I had an elderly,pathan gentleman come up from the icu after undergoing coronary bypass. He developed complications and had to go back to the icu for a few days.Soon after this second stint, he came back to the ward where he , thankfully, made a speedy recovery and was discharged. He was and is, an agile and spirited man and made sure to always have a sharp but good natured comment or two for me whenever I was on call. On the day of his discharge, he invited all 3 of us duty doctors to come visit him in Quetta as his guests. We all laughed and agreed , knowing full well that would never happen.


 Then just yesterday, I didn't go to work as there were some things I needed to get done, I got a call from the hospital. It was my friend who told me that the "baba" was back and he had come bearing gifts for all of us!
It was a box of sweet fresh black cherries from his own orchards. 

The gesture was sweet, completely unnecessary and created a bit of a funny situation with all of us mumbling and running around trying to figure out how to say no without hurting his feelings. Over here, the business of gift giving and taking is serious stuff, and the giftee is bound to feel insulted/affronted if the denial to accept is vehement.

One day later, watching the cherries disappear in my brother's endless stomachs,I decided to make a dessert from whatever was left over. Now comes the dilemma. Lots of strawberry desserts out there. Plenty of alcoholic cherry using drinks out there, particularly cherry using desserts requiring simple ingredients, not quite that many. So below are three things I'm leaning towards that can be made with easily available ingredients.

Cherry Custard Tart

Cherry Fried Pies

Cherry Clafoutis

In the meantime, I went ahead and pitted and froze the cherries.The process was messy and incredibly fun, if you can believe me. I used a wooden skewer to push the pits out.

It may take me a day or 2 to get in the zone for baking, since it's ramazan and work along with fasting is not really ideal for this kind of cooking.

If any of you have recipes to share, could be drinks, desserts , anything not too complicated ingredients wise, do share.