Dried Sour Cherry Preserves

You know those amazing—and super-expensive—luxardo cherries the fancy bars use in manhattans? I’m still working on duplicating those, and I’m afraid it might have something to do with the variety of cherries Luxardo uses: The small, dark, not-too-juicy Marasca (hence maraschino). The sour cherry preserves have close to the right flavor, but not the right level of firmness. I’ve tried dehydrating sour cherries to various degrees and then cooking them in a thick syrup, much like the method for the Shirley Temple Cherries; I’ve tried using firmer sweet cherries and making the syrup that surrounds them extra tart. They’re all delicious, but not Luxardo cherries. The closest I’ve come is a method using already-dried unsweetened sour cherries. This won’t help you if you have fresh sour cherries, but if you’re as obsessed with Luxardo cherries as I am, try this: To make a half-pint jar, soak ½ cup unsweetened dried sour (tart) cherries in warm water for about 2 hours, then drain. In a nonreactive saucepan, combine 1 cup sugar (a lot, I know!), ¾ cup water, and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. Bring to a boil, dump in the soaked cherries, and simmer until the syrup is deep red and the cherries are firm (the syrup will almost candy them). You can keep these in the fridge for months, or process the jar in a boiling-water bath for 5 minutes for pantry storage. You can easily multiply this recipe to make a larger batch—and you might have extra syrup, which is itself delicious and can be processed separately, if you’d like.