Sour cherries are elusive. Their pie recipe is straightforward

Cherry season in Southern California is eagerly anticipated and all too brief, so it’s good to be ready to jump in with a plan when they appear. Personally I think the greatest plan is to make room in the freezer so you can stow cherries after they’ve been pitted for future use. 

But when it comes to the elusive sour cherry, it’s got to be all about pie. A proper cherry pie is made with sour, not sweet, cherries. You can make pie with sweet cherries, but I always think they’re better in tandem with another fruit, like peaches for example, which means waiting until stone fruit season is in full swing. Or just use them in a tart with chocolate or almond frangipane to allow that ripe cherry flavor to sing.

Making a cherry pie is pretty straightforward. You want a flaky, buttery crust and a nicely thickened filling. You’ll want to make two sets of decisions. Will the top crust be ventilated using lattice or making openings using decorative stamps, or will you simply roll out a full top crust?

Will you cook the cherries with thickener and sugar in the pie, or will you make a precooked filling? There are positives and negatives to each decision. Let’s look at filling first.

I usually prefer to let the filling cook inside the pie because fruit often takes a while to cook and for the resultant juices to get hot enough to boil and activate the thickener of choice, be it flour, cornstarch or tapioca. Because I like a well-cooked top and bottom crust, the pie as a whole is usually done at the same time. Just as the thickened juices begin to bubble out of the vents or holes in the top crust, the bottom crust is usually properly deeply golden brown. You rarely are at risk of the fruit overcooking. Pre-cooking the filling, however, does have its advantages. Because you’re cooking the filling in a pot on the stove, it’s possible to get it exactly to the sweetness and thickness you want. But that means it will be completely cooked before you allow it to cool and put it in the raw pie dough-lined pan. There will be a tendency to pull the pie from the oven before the crust is truly well cooked. And the fruit may become overcooked.

Now to the top crust. Cherry pie is often topped with a lattice crust because the openings allow for the evaporation and concentration of the cherry juice. But you can manage that by simply macerating the cherries with sugar before baking. You can then drain off the juice and reduce it a bit over the stove. You’ll want to let it cool before mixing it back in with the cherries and continuing on with the making of the pie. It’s a Rose Levy Beranbaum trick. Okay, back to the top of the pie. I don’t love lattice because the bumps where the horizontal and vertical strips of dough meet never get evenly browned, so I usually use a round cookie or biscuit cutter that is approximately cherry-sized to punch holes in the dough. That way I get evenness and ventilation. But I also love an unventilated crust if I’ve reduced the cherry juice over the stove.

The pie is in the oven, now you just need patience. Never eat a pie hot from the oven. It needs to cool to let the thickener do its magic, so that all those juices make it to your mouth. Enjoy!

Classic sour cherry pie

Ingredients 

• 4 cups sour cherries, pitted
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 pie crusts 

Instructions 

1. Preheat your oven to 425°F.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the cherries, sugar, cornstarch, and salt.
   Roll out one pie crust and place it into a 9-inch pie dish. 
3. Pour the cherry filling into the pie crust, making sure it's evenly distributed.
4. Roll out the second pie crust and use a small round cookie cutter to punch out holes in the dough. Or keep the top dough intact. The decision is yours.
5. Place it over the filling. Trim the edges and crimp them together as you like.
6. If you keep the top crust intact, cut out a few slits in the top of the pie to allow steam to escape.
7. Bake the pie for 50-60 minutes, or until the crust is deep golden brown and the filling is bubbly.
8. Remove the pie from the oven and allow it to cool for at least 30 minutes before serving.