Plum Tired

Saucy, Plums? Any good in Pie? – Prunish

No, plums contain too much liquid for a pie, which would only turn the dough into a soggy mess. This is a little heartbreaking considering the fruit is a member of the Prunus family; members include the peach and cherry, whose easy as pie demeanor makes for some good filling.

There are still plenty of ways to plum it up: Cakes, cobblers (see streusel here), Julia Child’s greatest cookbook, Baking with Julia, recommends a sweetened cornbread/johnnycake cobbler topping. There are fritters – served hot and sprinkled with sugar. There is an actual plum pudding. Considering its cherry like attributes, some recommend the plum for clafoutis, if not clafoutis, its kin, the crepe is a safer bet. Paris-Brest – a ring of choux paste filled with kirsch/brandy enhanced pastry cream and sliced plums would be something that is both French and a variation on the traditional.

The Germans make Zwetschgenschnecken – a plum worm. Apparently plums are both pflaume or zwetschge in German but a plum worm is rolled bread baked with fresh plum jelly. Plums sautéed with brown sugar and brandy for a better than maple syrup topping for French Toast and possibly pancakes.

Plums pleasantly make a transition that not all fruits do - working well from the savory side as well as the sweet side. Pitted and stuffed into pork loin with garlic is good. There is even a plum sauce for Duck enthusiasts. Tossed in a salad with goat cheese and almonds is a meal onto itself. Marinated in balsamic vinegar and broiled with or without blue cheese is a very good snack – more in an appetizer, not after school type of way.

Plums make good jellies and jams but the fruit probably best know in its preserved form as a prune. Although they share a common name, the unsexy, dried prune should never be confused with the small tasty fresh Italian prune, unless of course it has been dried out. The word plum was pretty much a generic term for any dried fruit in the late Middle Ages – hence plum pudding. A remnant of this usage is the English custard - Plum-duff or spotted dick, which is a plum-free plum pudding. Slowly, the word came to mean a specific fruit as the Old English, Plume and the Old French Prune, both evolved from the same Latin root - at the same time as the words were drifting apart the fruit was being propagated and selected to make a larger and more diverse fruit.

And just at point of clarification - one is plumb tired as in a plumb line: Never plum tired, no matter how exhausted they become attempting to think of ways to use 80 pounds of fruit falling off a tree in the backyard this week.