Oh my. If you've been following my instagram page, you might've seen my beautiful little batch of maraschino cherries. No, not those ungodly syrupy red storebought things that look like they were mistakenly thrown in the wash with Mickey Mouse's shorts. I mean some seriously tasty, boozy goodness that your supposed Italian grandmother Rosa would approve of. I have them sitting in the fridge right now, and it's proving incredibly difficult to exercise some form of restraint and not eat all of them before they've been given them a chance to grace another weekly drank.
While there are commercially available alternatives, like Luxardo's own original maraschino cherries, they're incredibly difficult to find (maybe an Italian market or exceedingly well stocked liquor store?). Even the Maraschino Liqueur I used to make my own was fairly tough to get a hold of, but you should be able to find it at one of your local liquor store gems with a decent liquor selection (Keg n' Cork is a fine Edmonton example). Proper maraschino cherries are made with Italian Marasca cherries, but unless you live in Italy or have some serious cherry connections, any cherry will do. I've used some smaller, more vibrant red, sour-ish cherries, but use what's available.
The three primary ingredients are your cherries (surprise!), Maraschino Liqueur, and simple syrup. In researching around the internets, I've found that vanilla or almond extract, as well as orange peel or orange blossom water add a nice flavour. Using a heavy syrup (2:1 ratio for sugar:water) is also recommended. If you have a cherry pitting tool, good for you, but I was not so fortunate. The good news is you can use a bottle and a chopstick (or similar poking device) to pit your stubborn little garnish-lumps. The best method I found was to lovingly rub your chopstick tip around the rim your cherries stem-hole to loosen it up *giggles*, plant the aforementioned end against your bottle opening, and push through the back end of the cherry into the pit and through the cherry. If done correctly, the pit should either come out on it's own or simply require a nimble twist of the finger to finish the job. Once you've gone through the process enough times to fill a mason jar with the little buggers, have a congratulatory smoke.
Once you have your jar filled with about one inch of space on top, half fill with simple syrup (or if you're feeling ambitious, I let my cherries fully soak in syrup for 24 hours, then dumped half out). Then I added a splash of vanilla extract, and a small splash of orange blossom water, and filled the remainder with my Maraschino Liqueur. Let them sit in the fridge for 3 days, et voila, some damn fine, homemade Maraschino Cherries. Now that you have your lovely garnish, you're going to need a delicious drink to put them in. What better than a beverage so iconically accompanied by our titular treat, they practically deserve their own buddy cop movie:
The Manhattan
- 2 oz rye (spicy) or bourbon (smooth)
- 1 oz sweet vermouth
- 2-3 dashes aromatic (typically Angostura) bitters
- 1 or more Maraschino cherries for garnish
Simply pour your liquids over ice, give it a good 30-50 stirs of the spoon, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and add one cherry, two cherries, or even three if you can't resist the playful tension between your by the book, straight shooting drink and its little round edgy, won't-play-by-the-rules partner.