Balsamic Cherries and Ricotta

Balsamic Cherries and Ricotta ~ Tart cherries served over creamy ricotta with drizzled balsamic reduction and mint. I have done some traveling lately. Just a bit. Ok, I have slept in more foreign beds in the last 60 days than in my own bed. Luckily for me, they have all been comfy beds, even those little, almost-on-the-ground, beds in Italy.

With all the traveling, I  have been devouring all my magazines. I subscribe to at least 10 different monthlies and 1 weekly. The monthlies pile up and then I spend a random weekend reading several months worth. Probably not the most effective way to go about reading them, but I surely look forward to my magazine reading weekends.

I don’t remember where I was or even what magazine I was reading, but I remember seeing this recipe for fresh cherries, lime juice, mint, and ricotta cheese. I am certain there were a lot more ingredients, but the magazine and I got separated on some plane ride or airport lounging and I have not been able to find it again.

This dish was recreated from an image stored in my memory. The balsamic is my own flourish. I had a new bottle from Italy I was itching to open. Plus, the lime juice and tart cherries seemed to be too much tartness for me. No doubt there was tons of sugar in the original recipe, but I do not recall how much.A couple of notes: I did not use my fancy balsamic since I was turning it into a sauce, but I decided to open the bottle anyway-and drink it. I chopped my mint and left it in the sauce, but you can leave the leaves whole and just remove the prior to serving. 

Balsamic Cherries and Ricotta

Author: Michelle

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Ingredients

• 1 lb cherries; cleaned , halved, and pitted
• Ricotta cheese , about 1/3 cup per person +/- to taste

Mint-Balsamic Sauce

• 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1/3 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 tsp mint; either whole leaf or finely chopped
• pinch of salt

Instructions

1. Clean, halve, and pit cherries, set aside.
2. Decide to either keep mint whole or finely chop.

Mint-Balsamic Sauce

1. In a sauce pan, add the balsamic vinegar, dark brown sugar, mint, and salt.
2. Over a medium high heat, stirring or whisking constantly, reduce the vinegar to a syrup. Reduce for 5 minutes for thiner syrup to about 10 minutes for a thicker syrup, the longer it is reduced, the thicker it will be. If using whole leaf mint, remove and discard the leaf.
3. In a bowl, add the ricotta cheese and cherries, drizzled several teaspoons of the reduction over the top.
4. Serve and enjoy.

This is my adaptation of some recipe from some magazine I read recently; I must give some sort of credit.Another practice picture. Dark on dark was too much, but I still like it.

So, will you leave your mint leaves whole or go extra-minty and chop them up?

Thank you for sharing!