Saturday is National Cherry Day in Britain. It’s a good idea: the fact is that we have lost 95 per cent of our cherry trees over the past 30 years and anything that can be done to halt that decline must be a force for good. One should accept the principle of “little acorns” and assume that what happens in London’s Borough Market (three days of cherry-related activities finish this weekend) today will sweep the country tomorrow – but you will have to forgive this reader’s scepticism. It seems that we cannot compete on price with the cherry producers of California or France, let alone those of Poland, so it is unlikely that the decline in British cherry production is going to be halted any time soon, even if our cherries are exceptional in flavour.

I have to be careful here. The last time I ranted about a declining fruit, it rained gooseberries. Kind readers did what my greengrocer – at the time – could not. They rushed into their gardens and picked for me kilos and kilos of brilliant gooseberries. We have made gooseberry sauce for mackerel and gooseberry hollandaise for salmon (really good), gooseberry fools and gooseberry tarts and we are close to exhausting our gooseberry repertoire, if not our appetite for gooseberries. As I write, I have just polished off a punnet of dessert gooseberries that another kind reader has delivered to me here at the restaurant.

Before more kind readers start ransacking their orchards, I hasten to reassure them that I am all right for cherries. Having participated in the launch of this year’s CherryAid campaign, I have been deluged with Frogmore Earlies, Bradbourne Blacks, Napoleons and Waterloos, to name but a few. We have made cherry financiers, clafoutis, savarins and sorbets. We have served cherries with duck and pigeon. We are not particularly short of ideas. Of course, were we to find the right sort of cherries – the dark, Morello-style sour cherries – to make Black Forest gâteau, I would be knocking up a chocolate génoise and dunking it with kirsch before you could say Berchtesgaden.

I am not sure if any of these wonderful recipes quite matches up to the bowl of cherries on the kitchen table, or to the brown paper bag crammed with cherries, usually in pairs so that you can hang them around your ears, that we used to get as children. As with tangerines at Christmas or strawberries in June, the cherry season should remain brief but bountiful, and, where the best fruit is concerned, one sometimes feels it is hard to improve on nature.

Except, perhaps, with pickling. If fresh cherries are the embodiment of innocence, pickled, or spiced, cherries are more sophisticated. They can be served plain, like olives, as a nibble with an aperitif. They are good with cold meats, including salami and Parma ham, and excellent with roast duck. I also have a special predilection for a pickled cherry with a tasty piece of Lancashire cheese. Another advantage of pickled cherries is that you can have your own special Cherry Day, should you want it, in September.

Rowley Leigh is the chef at Le Café Anglais
rowley.leigh@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/leigh

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Pickled cherries

Glass storage jars must always be scrupulously clean: an extra turn in the dishwasher just before use is always a good idea. Although jars of pickled cherries look highly decorative, they will keep better in the refrigerator.

Ingredients
1kg cherries
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs thyme
400g brown sugar
300ml red wine vinegar
150ml red wine
12 cloves
2 cinnamon sticks
2 blades mace
1 dsp peppercorns
1 tsp salt

Method
Wash the cherries and pack into preserving jars with the bay leaves and thyme. Combine all the remaining ingredients in a large saucepan. Bring to the boil and simmer very gently for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and cool. Pourinto the jars with the cherries, seal and refrigerate. The cherries can be used after a week but will keep for at least two months.