Cherry Clafoutis

I am reading Anna Karenina for the fourteenth time. This is what English teachers do in the summer — we reread the books we teach, looking for new ways in, new angles, new sentences to hold up to a classroom of teenagers and say, "Look at what Tolstoy did here. Look at how one sentence can hold an entire life." I read Anna Karenina for the first time at nineteen, in my dorm room at SUNY Albany, and I thought it was about love. At thirty I thought it was about marriage. At forty I thought it was about society. At fifty-nine I think it is about all of these things and also about food — the meals in that novel are as important as the conversations, and Tolstoy knew it. You can tell everything about a person by how they eat.

I made blintzes this week. Cheese blintzes — the crepes thin as paper, the filling a mixture of farmer's cheese and ricotta and sugar and a scrape of lemon zest that Sylvia added and never told anyone about because she believed a cook needs secrets, and lemon zest was hers. I found the lemon zest addition in her handwriting, on the back of a ConEd bill, years after she died. The handwriting was her grocery-list script — hasty, efficient, slanted right — and seeing it was like hearing her voice in the kitchen again: "More lemon, Ruthie. Always a little more."

I taught Sophie to make blintzes. That is: I held Sophie while Jennifer made blintzes. Sophie is four months old and does not have the motor skills for crepes, but she watched the process with the intensity of a baby who is absorbing data, and I choose to believe she was learning. The Rosen women begin their culinary education early. It is never too soon to understand that the crepe must be thin.

Rebecca visited for Sunday brunch. She brought a bottle of champagne and an argument about Nabokov that she has been having with a colleague, and she wanted my opinion, which is that Nabokov was a genius and a monster and the two things are not mutually exclusive. We ate blintzes and drank champagne and argued about literature for three hours, and it was the best Sunday I've had in months. Rebecca is my intellectual sparring partner, the one person in the world who can keep up with me in an argument about Russian literature and not flinch. She gets this from me. I get it from Sylvia, who could argue about anything with anyone and frequently did.

The blintzes were perfect. Thin, golden, filled with sweetness. Sylvia's ghost approved. I could tell by the lemon.

After Rebecca left, the champagne finished and the argument about Nabokov pleasantly unresolved, I found myself still at the kitchen table with a bowl of cherries I’d bought at the market and no particular plan for them. A Sunday that good deserves a second act. The clafoutis I made that afternoon was quieter than the blintzes—no ghosts to consult, no family recipe to uphold—just eggs and sugar and fruit settling into something golden and custard-soft in the oven, the French cousin of everything Sylvia taught me about letting a simple batter do its work. Here is how I made it.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 45 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 lb fresh or frozen cherries, pitted (sweet Bing or sour, your preference — Sylvia would say sour, and she would be right)
3 large eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar, plus 1 tablespoon for the pan
1 cup whole milk
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
1 teaspoon fresh lemon zest (always a little more)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened, for the pan
Powdered sugar, for dusting

Instructions

Preheat and prepare. Heat your oven to 375°F. Generously butter a 9-inch round baking dish, cast iron skillet, or ceramic gratin dish, then dust the buttered surface with the tablespoon of granulated sugar, tilting to coat evenly. Tap out any excess.
Arrange the cherries. Scatter the pitted cherries across the bottom of the prepared dish in a single, mostly even layer. Do not fuss over this excessively. Imperfection is allowed in clafoutis and in life.
Make the batter. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs and 1/2 cup sugar together for about two minutes, until the mixture is pale and slightly thickened. Add the milk, heavy cream, vanilla extract, almond extract, and lemon zest. Whisk to combine.
Add the flour. Sift the flour and salt directly into the egg mixture. Whisk until completely smooth and no lumps remain — this batter should be thin and pourable, closer to a crepe batter than a cake batter. This is the point. The thinness is the thing.
Pour and bake. Pour the batter slowly and evenly over the cherries. Transfer to the oven and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until the clafoutis is puffed and golden at the edges, set in the center with just the faintest wobble when you nudge the pan, and a toothpick inserted near the middle comes out clean.
Rest and serve. Let the clafoutis rest for at least 10 minutes before serving — it will deflate slightly as it cools, which is not failure but physics. Dust generously with powdered sugar. Serve warm or at room temperature, with champagne if the occasion calls for it, which it usually does.

Nutrition (per serving)

Cherry Clafoutis — The French Dessert That Taught Me Thin Batter, Like Good Prose, Holds Everything Together