Plum Assignment

 fig. a:  fall plums

Michelle is back in the pages of Urban Expressions discussing one of her absolute favourite topics:  plums.  She's of Czech heritage, after all.  And there's a reason she named our line of preserves Švestka.

 fig. b:  Czech plum

Anyway, it's definitely the season for them, those beautiful Italian and Mont-Royal plums are the last of the year's stone fruits, and they're so versatile:  you can prepare them so many different ways across the sweet to savoury spectrum, from compote, jam, jelly, and butter, to cake, torte, tart, and pudding, to chutneys and pickles.

The featured recipe is for Michelle's beautiful plum and walnut torte.

 fig. c:  Czech plum torte

It's described as being for a "more adventurous baker," and, yes, it is a little involved, but it's absolutely worth the effort.  And if you decide the torte's too much trouble, you could always just make a batch of plum compote--the recipe is included.

Once again, you can find the article and the accompanying recipe here.

Now all you have to do is get out to one of our friendly neighbourhood farmers' markets to pick up a bunch of those plum dandies.

aj

Plum Dandy

fig. a: Italian prune plums

Let's just say that you happen to be living in a place where you can still get some of those beautiful Italian prune plums grown locally. Nice ones. Juicy ones. In October. Yeah, I know--it seems hard to believe, but there are such places.

fig. b: hazelnut sourdough

Let's also say you have a half a loaf of day-old bread kicking around. And let's just say it's half a loaf of a day-old sourdough. Who knows? It might even be half a loaf of a sourdough you baked yourself. It might even be half a loaf of a hazelnut sourdough you baked yourself. It's certainly possible.*

And, finally, let's say that the temperatures at night have been getting a little nippy (as they're supposed to at this time of year, in this part of the hemisphere). And you're in the mood for a lovely fall dessert--a simple one, a heart-warming one.

Well, you've come to the right place.

fig. c: Hugh F-W**

Michelle got me a copy Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's The River Cottage Cookbook late this summer (better late than never, right?). And although I've found the book full of inspiration, and I've since made good use of it, for some reason, it was one of the book's simplest, homeliest recipes that caught my attention the first time I leafed through it: Fearnley-Whittingstall's bread pudding with plums.

fig. d: bread pudding recipe

From the moment I laid eyes on it, I just knew I was going to love it. And I couldn't wait for the Italian prune plums to arrive on the scene. Fearnley-Whittingstall doesn't specify a type of plum, although he always insists sourcing the best local ingredients whenever possible, but those Italian prune plums are among my favorites, and I had a feeling they'd pair well with one of my sourdoughs.

I was right.

fig. e: fall plum pudding

Plum Bread & Butter Pudding

6-8 large plus, or about 12 Italian prune plums, halved and pitted
1 cup sugar, plus extra for the plums
about 1/2 loaf of day-old bread, preferably sourdough and homemade, possibly even a hazelnut or walnut sourdough
2 tbsp softened unsalted butter
1 vanilla bean
2 cups heavy cream
3/4 cup whole milk
3 eggs
2 egg yolks
clotted cream or crème fraîche (optional, but highly recommended)

Preheat the oven to 400º F.

Place the plums in a baking dish and place about 1/2 teaspoon sugar in the center of each one. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until they are tender and their juices have run. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Cut the bread into slices that roughly correspond to the depth of the baking dish you'll be using for your pudding. I recommend a square one that's fairly deep. Fearnley-Whittingstall recommends cutting the crusts off the bread, but I love the crusts on my sourdough and I'm fond of them in my bread pudding too. Whichever way you choose, spread the slices of bread with the butter, and use any extra (or, more likely, a bit more butter) to grease the baking dish.

Arrange the buttered bread slices in your greased dish. Place the roasted plum halves between the bread slices, trying to distribute them fairly evenly throughout the pudding-to-be. Plug any glaring gaps by cutting leftover bread slices to fit; your dish should end up full but not overcrammed. Any syrupy juices from the dish in which the plums were baked should be poured over the bread and plum concoction at this stage.

Split the vanilla bean lengthwise and place it in a pan with the cream and milk. Bring them almost to a boil (scald them gently), then remove them from the heat and set aside for a few minutes to allow them to infuse.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, egg yolks, and 1 cup of sugar together until they are thoroughly blended. Remove the vanilla bean from the hot cream mixture ("you can rinse it, wrap it in plastic wrap, and use it again," the always resourceful Fearnley-Whittingstall notes), then pour the cram over the eggs and sugar, whisking all the time, until you have a thin but smooth and well-blended custard.

Strain the custard over the bread slowly and carefully, a little at a time, so it can seep and ooze between the cracks. If it looks like it may flood over the sides of the dish, wait a few minutes for it to soak into the bread before adding any more. Don't feel the need to add all the custard, but use enough so that only about 1/4" of the unsoaked bread protrudes out of the custard. The ratio isn't exactly the same, but think of an iceberg, about which it's often been said that 9/10ths sit below the surface of the ocean. In any case, allow the pudding to infuse for at least half an hour before baking.

Preheat your oven to 350º F. Bake the pudding for 30-40 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the custard is just set, but still slightly wobbly in the center.

This pudding is great hot, warm, or cold, and doesn't really need any accompaniment, but it's extra-fine with a dollop of clotted cream or crème fraîche, not to mention a tumbler of bourbon.

Serves 6

This recipe is a perfect example of the kind of simple pleasures we're so fond of here at AEB. We made it once with a straight-up country-style sourdough and it was positively amazing. On that occasion, the loaf was more than just day-old. It was about three days' old. No problem. We just made sure to let the bread soak in the custard a little longer (about an hour and a half), while we had dinner. And we baked the pudding as we did our post-dinner clean-up.  By the time we were done, it was time to dig in to our dessert.

We made it a second time with a hazelnut sourdough and it was absolutely transcendent.  The presence of the nuts (fresh ones, local ones) made it "next-level."

Fresh walnuts are due to be arriving at my local farmstand this week, and there are still some organic plums kicking around--maybe there'll be the opportunity for one more batch? Here's hoping.

aj

* For heaven's sake, don't get hung-up on homemade sourdough, though.  It would be a shame to miss out on this pudding because you don't bake your own sourdough bread.  Any day-old white or country loaf will do, although if you use a better bread, the overall flavors will likely be more interesting.

** Hugh F-W is definitely something of a poster boy for a certain kind of food-oriented sensibility that's become prevalent over the last decade--kind of a more thoughtful, more modest, and "foodier" early-21st-century answer to this '80s icon.

Hello, Greengage plum butter

Well, that jar of Baby Crawford peach jam from Andy’s Orchard disappeared in a hurry, and we had such a good time with it that we decided to bust out another of our California souvenirs. This time, however, we didn’t open up one of our can-as-you-go specials (although we do have a couple of those kicking around), we opted instead for one of the beauties Michelle bought directly from June Taylor last August, the day she got her personal workshop: Greengage plum.

We were familiar with the lore that surrounds Greengages, but neither of us had actually ever tried one until we visited Andy’s. Greengage season was effectively over by the time we got our tour of Andy’s Orchard, but Mr. Marinari managed to rustle up a few specimens for us nonetheless, even if they were past their prime in his eyes. Like everything else we had at Andy’s, they were outrageously good, so much better than Andy’s disclaimers would have led you to believe, and easily among the very best plums we’ve ever had. Obviously, this had a lot to do with Andy’s Orchard and the way they were cultivated, but it also had a lot to do with the variety itself, whose perfectly rounded honey-sweetness is the stuff of legends.

Alan Davidson notes that the Greengage originated in Armenia, by most accounts, but that the variety had reached France by the time of the reign of François I, where it was received very warmly indeed and was soon named after François’ wife, “Reine Claude,” the name by which the variety is still known to this day in that part of the world. By the early 18th century the variety had been introduced to England, where it also took hold, and where it became known as the Greengage (or Green Gage) because of its color and because of Sir Thomas Gage, who was one of the earliest horticulturists to develop the variety on English soil, having purchased a number of fruit trees from the monks of Chartreuse, one of which turned out to be a Reine Claude plum tree. Our favorite fruit book of the moment, The Fruits and Fruit Trees of America by A.J. Dowling (1845), lists numerous other varieties of plum bearing the name “Gage,” including Autumn Gage, Bleecker’s Gage, Hudson Gage, Imperial Gage, and Yellow Gage, but the Greengage is the one that predated all the rest and the one that has largely outlasted the rest, and in both cases the reason has to do with its famous taste. Dowling goes so far as to write, “The Green Gage is universally admitted to hold the first rank in flavour among all plums, and is every where highly esteemed… It is pronounced… the best plum in England, and we must admit that we have no superiour to it here [in New York],” and he describes its fruit as “exceedingly melting and juicy” with a “flavour, at once, sprightly and very luscious.” We couldn’t agree more. Davidson, for his part, has the following somewhat contradictory comments to make: “Greengages, being the finest of dessert plums, should be enjoyed in their natural state. They also make the most luxurious of plum jams.” We were lucky enough to have had them both ways, but opening a jar of Greengage plum butter in February (on a –20 C night, no less) was like a godsend.

So much so, that we decided to celebrate their unveiling.

1. We brewed ourselves a pot of tea to accompany our reading material.



2. We put the finishing touches on a loaf of rye bread [recipe soon to follow], then baked it in the oven.



3. And, finally, we slathered butter and generous amounts of the Greengage plum butter on our still-warm slices of bread.



No question about it. This was the best dessert I’ve had in weeks (sounds crazy, I know, but you're going to have to trust me on this one). I remember June Taylor telling us about how she often feels stumped when asked for recommendations on how to use her wonderful line of jams and butters. Look no further, June.

aj

Revelation 10, pt. 2: Andy's Orchard

So, we opened that jar of preserved peaches and there we were again on that warm Central Californian morning in early August, roaming around Andy's Orchard with Andy Marinari himself and our friend Adam, listening to Andy tell us about his many, many varieties of peaches, plums, nectarines, and pluots, and tasting sample after sample of the very finest fruit any of us had ever had...

We were only in California for two Mondays, and this was the first of them. We got up rather early that day (at least by vacation standards) because we had a 9:00 AM appointment, and we had a lot of driving to do before then. Plus, we were excited. We were going to Morgan Hill, of all places (you can see it there, some 15-20 miles southeast of downtown San Jose),



but we were going there for a very special occasion. I’d been to Morgan Hill a couple of times when I was a kid, but not for stone fruits. They had a restaurant there in the hills, perched near a municipal airport. This being California in the early ‘80s, it was themed accordingly, festooned with aviation memorabilia of all sorts and bearing the name The Flying Dutchman, or something to that effect. We used to go from time to time for the “legendary” buffet brunch that some family friends had discovered there (they owned a light aircraft) and tipped us off to. This time around there were no Flying Dutchmen to contend with, thankfully. No, this particular trip to Morgan Hill was virtually kitsch-free (as kitsch-free as any drive across California, with its mission-style strip malls, hotel convention centers, and suburban homes, can be). Adam had lined up a very exclusive orchard tour at Andy’s Orchard, and he was kind enough to invite us along. We'll be forever indebted.



If you missed David Karp’s profile of Andy Marinari and his orchard in the July 2005 issue of Gourmet, Marinari has a reputation for being one of the finest and most creative pomologists and horticulturists on the continent, and Andy’s is quite simply one of the finest stone fruit orchards in America. Possibly even the finest. Andy comes from a family that has been growing fruit in the Santa Clara Valley for some 60 years, but he only turned to serious farming fruit himself when a long bout with a debilitating and potentially life-threatening illness brought him back to the land. Although Marinari underwent years of radical medical treatment, cultivating the land became a crucial, and ultimately lasting, part of his therapy. Karp devotes a lot of attention to Marinari’s triumph over adversity (his condition has remained in remission for some 25 years now)—for him it’s key to understanding Marinari’s dedication to his orchard, his search for the perfect fruit of his childhood, his utter mastery of horticulture and his passion for developing new varieties— but at the time that we visited Andy’s Orchard I hadn’t had a chance to read Karp’s article, so I was none the wiser when it came to all this back-story. Marinari made one brief allusion to it, assuming we’d all read Karp’s story, but otherwise he was humble and self-effacing, much more eager to discuss his trees and his fruit than any of the details of his life.

I was curious to know if there was any connection between him and the Marinari family in Cupertino. I’d grown up in neighboring Sunnyvale, and the Marinari family ran one of the biggest and best orchards in the area at the time. Already by that time (the late 1970s and early 1980s) the Santa Clara Valley had only a tiny fraction of the orchards that it had had only 20-30 years earlier. Luckily we still had Olson’s for Bing cherries and Marinari’s for dried fruit (such as their notorious “Wrinkles,” their chocolate-covered prunes). Turns out the Marinaris were one and the same, a Yugoslavian family (I’d always just assumed they were of Italian descent) whose patriarch worked as a commercial fisherman but developed a passion for growing fruit.



Marinari has a shy demeanor, but he sensed our enthusiasm—I’m sure it wasn’t difficult—and as soon as he could tell that we knew something about a good peach, plum, or nectarine, and that we shared his passion for tree-ripened fruit, Marinari’s stride picked up a bit—he only had a couple of hours before the midday heat set in and before he had to get back to business, and he wanted to show us as many varieties of fruit as possible. As we hustled around his orchard from one row to another (Baby Crawfords to Heavenly Whites, say), Marinari really started to open up to us about his fruit, about knowing the optimum moment to pick them, about the loving care and attention needed to achieve perfect fruit, and about insisting on the best. You could sense his pride as gave us his tour, but he really beamed each time we sampled one of his prize pieces of fruit. You see, he was taking us to particular trees and picking the ripest, most perfect examples of each fruit. At each stop, however, he’d say something to the effect of, “Not bad, but these are about two to three days from reaching their peak.” Later, he gave Michelle an entire box of Baby Crawfords that had been deemed unsuitable for sale (as fresh fruit, anyway). If we’d never gotten that tour of Marinari’s orchard, those “unsellable” peaches would have been by far and away the very best peaches I’ve ever tasted. The fruit we’d been tasting right off the trees were sheer Paradise. That’s why he was beaming. We were absolutely ecstatic at every station of the tour.



When he’d shown us as many varieties as he possibly could, and we’d sampled as many varieties as we could possibly taste (afterwards we figured we must have tasted somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 different pieces of fruit), Andy took us over to the drying and packing area of the operation. Andy’s Orchard ships tree-ripened fruit in specially designed crates all across America to discerning (and evidently wealthy) fruit-lovers—in fact, they even ship to Japan these days—but drying fruit is not only an excellent way to preserve fruit, it’s also the easiest, most economical way to prepare fruit for shipping. Things have changed since the days when California dried a massive percentage of its fruit production so that it could be shipped great distances to the population centers to the east—California is now the most populous state in the Union and “fresh” fruit is now shipped from one hemisphere to another, among other things—but Andy’s still devotes a healthy portion of its crop to drying. There’s no better way to salvage those pieces of fruit that aren’t quite up to Andy’s exacting standards for fresh fruit, and as we know all too well, those “castoffs” are better than the best fruit most of us have ever tasted—consequently, they make for the best dried fruit you’ve ever tasted. The real money may be in fresh fruit, but Andy’s is proof that there’s a demand for superior dried fruit, too.



When we’d finished inspecting the dried fruit works, Andy ran off to tend to business and we were left to take in the scene on our own. The temperature had risen steadily since we first arrived and we were getting a pretty good taste of what makes the conditions in Morgan Hill particularly ideal for the cultivation of stone fruits: cool nights and mornings followed by steady, dry heat. It may have had something to do with the copious amounts of fructose coursing through my veins, or the combination of the fructose and the heat, but it was then that I suddenly had a vision. It’s not like we’d been alone at the orchard with Andy—there’d been plenty of his employees and co-workers moving around the grounds, doing their daily work—but all of a sudden I spotted someone who left an impression. There was an older gentleman sitting in a golf cart watching us. He looked kind of interesting with his long, white beard and tattoos, even kind of familiar, so I walked over to talk to him. I found out his name was Henry. We ended up talking about urban and suburban sprawl and the way the region had changed over the decades. We talked about the fact that he hadn’t set foot in San Jose, just 15 miles to the south, since the ‘70s. I found out that he’d been with the Marinari family since the late ‘60s, when he retired from driving a truck, and that he lived in a trailer and rarely left the orchard grounds anymore. And that's when I realized where I’d seen him before: in the work of R. Crumb. See, he looked a lot like Mr. Natural. I asked him what he had planned that afternoon and he said, “Just takin’ it easy. Been takin’ it easy since ’67.” In the pages of the crumbmuseum.com, the “curator” puts forward the theory that “Natch” was based not on Professor O.G. Wottasnozzle of Popeye fame, as Harvey Pekar once claimed, but on the “little hitchhiker.” Suffice to say, I’ve got my own theory. Keep on truckin', indeed. Too bad I never worked up the courage to ask Henry if I could take his picture.



Anyway, when I’d said adios to Henry, and Adam, Michelle, and I had decided it was just about time to make a move (we were still hoping to make it to San Juan Bautista for lunch, after all), there was only one thing left to do: hit the gift shop. The gift shop is a relatively new addition to Andy’s Orchard. Andy’s focus has always been first and foremost on the quality (and variety) of his fruit. It's only recently that he's begun to concern himself with marketing his product in new ways. We admired Andy’s collection of vintage fruit cans—just look at those varieties of canned fruit that have since become extinct—bought some dried fruit assortments for family and friends, and then hung around just long enough to grab Andy one last time so we could thank him and wish him a proper goodbye.

Andy was a bit embarrassed by the request, but I managed to muster the courage to ask him for his photograph. I took the photo below and we drove off into the 100 degree Fahrenheit heat. Hours later we were still on a fruit sugar high. Actually, maybe it was just our good fortune that had us buzzing.

See? That’s what happens when you bust open a can of the fruit your preserved during your summer vacation. Find this hard to believe? Try it. You’ll see…

aj

note: this is the final installment in our Revelations series, all of which stemmed from our July-August 2005 trip to California. Special thanks to Karina for making the trip possible.