Fresh Cherry Sauce

August and the summer is ending. I will be back at the apartment next week — junior year, the year the plan accelerates. Junior year is when the MCAT happens, when the GPA must hold, when the medical school applications begin forming in the background like weather. I can feel the shift. The first two years were foundation. The next two are structure. And after that, the building stands or it does not, and I intend for it to stand.

MawMaw Shirley and I had a full day at Baker on Saturday — the last Saturday before I move back to campus. We cooked everything. Not by plan but by impulse: she started with biscuits (breakfast), then moved to shrimp Creole (lunch), then gumbo (dinner, the full version, because our last-Saturday-of-summer requires the full version). I followed her through all of it, and the following felt different from how it felt when I was twelve or sixteen or eighteen. At twelve, I followed to learn. At twenty, I follow to accompany. The cooking is no longer a lesson. It is a partnership. She stirs. I stir. We do not need to speak about the division because the division is natural, the way water divides around a stone — each path correct, each path leading to the same place.

She sent me home with three containers of gumbo, a bag of okra from the garden, and a new recipe card: her peach cobbler, handwritten in the leather notebook, which she tore out and handed to me. "For your apartment," she said. "It's peach season. Make it while the peaches are right." I will make it. The peaches are right. The peaches are always right in August in Louisiana, which is one of the few things that August in Louisiana gets exactly correct.

Sunday dinner at Scotlandville. The last Sunday before the semester. Mama's red beans. Daddy's grill. The table. The family. I ate and I looked at the kitchen — Mama's kitchen, the kitchen she designed after the flood, the kitchen that Marcus Robinson rebuilt with his own hands — and I thought: I am going to have a kitchen like this. Not this one. My own. Years from now. And in that kitchen I will cook MawMaw Shirley's recipes and Mama's recipes and my own recipes, and the cooking will be the thread that connects all the kitchens together, from Baker to Scotlandville to Highland Road to wherever I end up, and the thread will hold because the women who made it were strong and the recipes they wrote were true.

MawMaw Shirley’s instruction was simple: cook while the fruit is right. She said it about the peaches, but she’s said it about every fruit that comes through Baker in the summer, and the lesson is always the same — the season doesn’t wait for you to be ready. I don’t have a peach cobbler in my apartment kitchen yet, but I have a pot on the stove and cherries from the market at peak season, and this fresh cherry sauce is the bridge I built between her handwritten recipe card and the kitchen I’m still learning to make my own.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 15 minutes | Total Time: 25 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

2 cups fresh sweet cherries, pitted and halved
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon cold water (for cornstarch slurry)
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Pinch of salt

Instructions

Prep the cherries. Pit and halve all cherries. If using a cherry pitter, work over a bowl to catch the juice — you want every drop for the sauce.
Start the base. Combine the cherries, sugar, 2 tablespoons water, lemon juice, lemon zest, and salt in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir to coat the cherries evenly.
Simmer. Bring the mixture to a gentle simmer, stirring occasionally. Cook for 8–10 minutes until the cherries soften and release their juices and the liquid begins to reduce.
Thicken the sauce. In a small bowl, whisk together the cornstarch and 1 tablespoon cold water until smooth. Pour the slurry into the simmering cherry mixture while stirring constantly.
Finish and flavor. Continue to cook for 2–3 more minutes, stirring, until the sauce thickens to a glossy, spoonable consistency. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla extract.
Cool and serve. Allow the sauce to cool for at least 5 minutes before serving. It thickens further as it cools. Serve warm over ice cream, pound cake, biscuits, or cobbler — or refrigerate in a sealed jar for up to one week.

Nutrition (per serving)

Fresh Cherry Sauce — The Fruit MawMaw Would Have Approved