Instructions
Every teenager needs a summer escape. My friends and I, when not ensconced in the kitchens at work, headed to the beaches of northern NSW where we’d bedeck ourselves in the tie-died rags of a generation that was not ours, and loll about making grossly general pronouncements about the state of the world and its people. In truth the free love appealed more than the politics, but that is a discussion for another time and place.
One summer, owning to catastrophic bushfires raging up the coast, we decided to take the inland route via the New England Highway.
Just south of Tenterfield, as my patience with the heat was running out, I saw a roadside stall and decided to take a break. ‘Plums Evry Tipe’, the sign said in hand writing that seemed to get smaller as it approached the impending edge of the board. And indeed, plums were the sole offer of the day, even if they did come in an astonishing array of varieties.
Santa Rosa, Blood, Greengage, Yellowgage, Klamath, Damson, Mirabelle, Sugar and Sierra. Even some smaller more obscure plums without labels. Naturally, I grabbed half a dozen of each. The range of flavours, textures and colours was astonishing, and delicious.
Plums come into season in December, then the varieties continue to appear one after another until the end of March. Choose crisp plums with tart flavours for savoury foods, and sweet, soft plums for desserts and jams. Regardless of which kind of plum you choose, select the fruit using your nose. The perfume you smell is the flavour you’ll taste.
Like its relatives the peach and apricot, plums can be blanched and skinned, although with a little more difficulty. Plums are, however, well-suited to preserving and drying. You probably know the dried plum by its other name, the prune.
Which brings me back to the summers of old. A small piece of advice if you’re wanting to sample the range of plums on offer this summer. Fifty plums (or pre-prunes if you like) are not necessarily the best diet when stuck in the car on a long road trip.
Plum crostata