Fruit guilt

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I’m all about fruit guilt these days, thanks to that bountiful stone fruit season you’ve been hearing about. Our plum tree is full of ripe, red-purple plums and the birds and squirrels haven’t gobbled up as many as in previous years. So after taking a big bag to the office (Friday), making a tart (Saturday), giving away two bags to enthusiastic cook friends (Sunday) and setting out a box with a ‘Help Yourself’ sign on the sidewalk in front of the house (refilled daily), I got into home preserving mode. I don’t have time to take a whole day from the office to put up jars of plum conserve, plum chutney and plum jam, but I can grab an hour here and there and end up with a year’s supply of plum butter.

My strategy is all about rapidly getting the fruit to a first stage of preparation so it doesn’t spoil, and then catching up with myself on the weekend. So I harvest every day, then immediately wash the plums and cut them, unpeeled, into a pan on the stove. I add nothing to the pot -- these are a mixture of super-ripe, kinda ripe and oops-that-one’s-not-ready-yet fruit -- and there’s plenty of liquid/juice. I bring it to a quick boil, simmer 10 or so minutes until the fruit’s tender, cool a bit and then use an immersion blender to purée the cooked fruit.

This I can store in the fridge until I’m ready to proceed with making plum butter -- measuring the purée, adding an equal amount of sugar, spicing it with cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg and then simmering till thick. It’s the simmering till thick part that takes time, but I’ll have already done the fruit prep, so this second stage will take only a couple of hours max.

Then I’ll head out to the yard and start picking again.

-- Susan LaTempa