Plum delicious

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with plums for most of my life. I want to enjoy them; a good plum is divine. But the skin is so often so sour that it ruins the fun for me; and (as with peaches), many supermarket plums never quite ripen to that exquisite place where the fruit is perfectly soft and deliciously sweet. 

So when Charlie Paley told me he had great plums, I kind of didn’t pay attention. That was three weeks ago. I totally blew that one. When I finally got down to his Sharon market and bought a pint of plums, I had a plum-eating experience that was unparalleled in my lifetime. 

Charlie’s plums come from the Hudson Valley but are a variety called Long Johns. The ever-useful internet indicates that they are a French or European variety. 

These plums are long and oval-shaped with dark purple skin. They look to my imagination like whales (which endears them to me; I love whales).  They are sweet through and through, with no sour skin. 

I returned immediately to the farm stand and bought about 5 quarts of them, took them home, put them in jam and pies and came back for more — only to discover that there were no more left. 

This is a story about missed opportunities. 

So next summer I will know to go early and buy twice as many of the Long John plums. There is another dark-skinned, smaller European variety at the market now, which I am currently in the process of buying up. 

What’s going to happen to all these plums? And more important,  why is it that prunes famously help keep you “regular” while plums apparently do not (well, not any more than any other fruit).

All fruit helps with digestion because it has a lot of fiber; fiber absorbs a lot of water and that helps your body to more efficiently get rid of waste. 

Prunes (or dried plums as they are now known) for reasons that no one seems to be able to explain on the internet, are better at it than fresh plums. This seems to have something to do with a higher level of sorbitol in the prunes than in the fresh fruit. But no one seems to really know. 

The fresh fruit is healthy in the same way as most fruit. In addition to fiber, plums have a lot of vitamin C, which is believed to be one of the best cancer-fighting antioxidants.

This is the first year when I’ve made fruit jams and preserved them in Mason jars with the help of a hot water bath. We’ll see if any of my preserves explode in three months, but so far they all seem to have been perfectly preserved; the lid made a nice loud pinging sound on each jar as they cooled. I won’t try to explain how to make plum jam; just follow the directions on the Certo or Sure-Jell package. 

If you’d like to make a plum pie, I’ll share with you the incredible crust I’ve been working with all summer. It’s foolproof (I swear it!) and has served me well not only for plum tarts but also for peach tarts and apple pies — and for making traditional Jewish rugelach cookies. This recipe was handed down to me from my Aunt Frances, through my great aunts Ruth and Peppy. If you want the cookie recipe, ask me by email (cynthiah@lakevillejournal.com). 

To make the pie crust, take out your food processor and first combine one package of Philadelphia cream cheese and two sticks of unsalted butter. This is harder than it sounds; the two fats don’t want to combine, so you’ll have to stop the machine and scrape down the sides a few times. Don’t be daunted. 

Then add two cups of good quality white flour (I like Bob’s Red Mill and King Arthur) and run the food processor until the dough just forms into a ball. This is about twice as much processing as you would normally do for a quality pie crust, I will note, but you still end up with a nice, light, flaky crust. Having said that, don’t overprocess the dough; take it out as soon as it comes together and put it on a big sheet of plastic wrap and knead it a few times. You’ll find a few lumps of either cream cheese or butter that will be better distributed if you do a little kneading. 

Break the dough into two balls cover each with plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least three hours, so the flour can rest. I’ve left this dough in the fridge for as long as a week and it’s been fine. 

When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Put parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Take out one of your plastic-wrapped dough balls. Spread out more plastic wrap on your counter and roll the dough out. 

If you use the plastic wrap, you won’t have to flour your counter, which is good because extra flour will toughen the crust. 

When the crust is rolled out to about an eighth of an inch, nice and thin, take the parchment paper off your cookie sheet, lay it down over your crust and flip it, plastic wrap on the bottom, parchment on top, onto the cookie sheet. Remove the plastic wrap, and lay your fruit on top of the dough and then fold the sides up so you get a rustic, peasant-style crust.  You can make a standard pie tin-pie crust too, but this is easier. 

To prepare the plums for baking, slice them up but leave the skins on if you’re lucky enough to have Long Johns. Regular plum skins sometimes get even more sour during baking; I don’t know how to advise you on this. 

Ideally you should slice or chop your plums the day before you plan to bake. Put them in a bowl or resealable plastic bag in the refrigerator overnight with some sugar sprinkled on them; this will soften the flesh and especially the skin. Before baking, add a sprinkling of cinnamon and cloves. 

Back to the crust: Once you’ve added the fruit and rolled up the sides, it’s extra delicious if you squash some “natural” sugar (the kind that is brown but that isn’t called “brown sugar”) on the crust before baking. Dot the fruit with some butter and maybe squeeze on some lemon or orange juice. Bake for about 25 minutes, until the crust is golden.