 |
| Quiterie, 1840 |
Damsons -
Plums appear at Midwestern markets for a long stretch, from July to October, as the many different varieties like Greengage, Mirabelle, Italian prune, French prune, and more come into ripeness. Some are very tannic, some are very sour, some are mild and sweet. Some are ovular, some more round, some larger, some tiny. It’s always worth making sure you know which kind you are buying.
That being said, getting caught with an unexpected plum is what led to this post. I got a clamshell container of small, round plums from the grocery store. They were marked just as “local plums.” I think if I bought them at the farmer’s market, someone would have given me a heads up as to the profile of the fruit. I’m not going to the big farmer’s market for a little while, however, because my car was towed there recently, and I’m still recovering from going to retrieve it from the sub basement of Lower Wacker drive, which falls somewhere between the fifth and seventh circle of hell.
I bought these plums intending to eat them as snacks. When I bit into one at home, the skin was tannic, and the flesh was unpalatable and sour. For this post I did some research and learned they are damson plums. I can’t believe I didn’t realize this earlier, as it explains so much. I heard damsons are bright and astringent, making them excellent for things like jam-making and infusing gin and vodka. They are smaller than most other plums, and have blue skin and yellow flesh. I know them in large part due to their similarity with beach plums. The mighty beach plum, prunus maritimus, is a deciduous, salt- and cold- hearty bush native to the east coast. There are many of these bushes where my husband is from in the Long Island Sound, although, when I asked him about it for this post, we realized he’s never actually seen a beach plum. (He thought he had but in fact had confused them with rosehips).
Plum sauces -
I haven’t made time for baking or jam-making lately, and so, the plums ended up being used for dinner. I didn’t set out to experiment with these fruits - rather, they were just there in my kitchen, and I thought, I ought to toss these in something, not let them go to waste.
On the first occasion, I was going to make a bolognese with some of the roma tomatoes we had just picked from our plants. there were the tomatoes, sitting next to the plums. The petite size of these little plums may be what made them seem more approachable towards an idea that, now looking back, is a little wild.
In cooking the damson plums, I discovered how wonderfully easily the fruit broke down, and how that tannic skin imbued such a gorgeous deep pink hue. This explains all the more how readily they are used in jams and jellys, and to add color and flavor to liqueur. The smooth pink pulp seems to emulsify really well with different animal fats, too.
Once you pit them, you can use them a lot where you might use roma tomatoes. They are even more acidic than tomatoes, however, so you have to calibrate around that. This is also something to consider when deciding on what wine to drink. You’ll need something higher in acidity - which we have in spades at the moment.
I made two sauces - a kind of Bolognese sauce, and a kind of pan sauce for chicken.
A note on cooking with fruit -
I feel very comfortable combining fruit and meat, especially pork and poultry. My deep affection for Cantonese food has meant a lifelong love of plum sauce. In my experience, this sauce was always brown, not orange, as it is sometimes in jars at the grocery store. I have yet to prepare a Cantonese plum sauce, but would very much like to explore it more with a different variety of plum (I thought damsons would be too astringent for that). Based on some quick online research, China is where plums were first cultivated. The damson plum is named for Damascus, where it is believed to first be bred.
My comfort with fruit and meat maybe also comes from working in wine. It’s been part of my work for a long time to think about how wine goes with food, and thus, what kind of fruit flavors go with meat, a common facet of american cookery. I also grew up in a home where my mom made seared and roasted pork tenderloin for parties, served with an orange or, in the later years, a pomegranate sauce.
Cooked fruit and meat became further intuitive to me when i was at the Ballymaloe cookery school in Ireland. I learned how to make a very simple rhubarb sauce, which is usually served with pork belly loin that has been roasted then broiled to crispen its fat. My second day at the school I stumbled on another fruit sauce. The students were offered wild game that had just been hunted that day. I took a duck back to my cottage that night, eager and determined to prove I wasn’t too squeamish to feather and field dress a bird. I seared the breasts. I snagged some kumquats from the potted trees in the dining room at the school, sliced them into rounds, cooked them down with water and sugar, and hoped for the best. The sauce turned out well, and, incidentally, this is the same basic technique for the rhubarb sauce I later learned.
Damson bolognese
4 entree portions
1 tsp neutral oil
1 lb ground pork
½ red onion, chopped
1 carrot, finely diced
1 stalk celery, finely diced
4 tablespoons butter
10 - 12 damsons, cut in half to remove pits
3/4 cup milk
Salt & black pepper to season
Heat a heavy bottomed skillet with high sides, then add the oil. When oil is warm, add the pork, season with salt and brown, then set aside on a plate. Add the onion and cook until translucent. Then add the butter, carrot and celery. Cook on medium- high heat for about 5 min, stirring occasionally. Season with salt as you add ingredients. Add the pitted damsons, and cook until flesh becomes pulp and skins separate completely from pulp, about 10 minutes. Add milk and turn heat down to a simmer. Cover and cook for 1 hour.
To serve, toss with a cooked pasta noodle like tagliatelle or rigatoni, along with freshly chopped parsley and marjoram, if you can find some, and some grated parmigiano reggiano cheese.
Eat with a racy white wine. There’s no wine in the recipe because the damsons have so much acidity. To drink I recommend the new aligote we have in from Vini Viti Vinci. At first I had this dish with Cantina Giardino Paski, because I had one cold in the fridge and that was delicious to drink, but with the sauce, it edged on astringent. Going instead with the naturally acidic Aligote from a cooler part of France, and also a white wine without tannin, serves the pasta much better.
Crispy Chicken thighs with damson sauce
This is sort of two recipes - the first, for the chicken - a kind of like rough and ready chicken under a brick, or at least the concept behind it. The sauce works like a creamy cranberry sauce to serve on the side. The sauce could also be made with pan drippings from an oven-roasted chicken. For that - after roasting the chicken in a skillet, remove the bird. Set the skillet on the stovetop at medium heat and follow the sauce recipe from its start.
2 tablespoons neutral oil
4 boneless chicken thighs, skin on, tossed in salt and pepper
8 - 10 damsons
¼ cup white wine
2 teaspoons of sugar
Heat a cast iron or heavy bottomed skillet, then add oil. When oil is very hot, add chicken thighs, skin side down. Place another cast iron or other heavy object on top of the chicken, to get a very brown and crispy skin. Cook for ten minutes with that weight on top, then flip thighs over to cook another 2 - 4 minutes. Set aside to a plate. With pan still on medium-high heat, toss in damsons. Cook 2 - 3 minutes, until skins start peeling away. Add white wine and cook for another 8 minutes, whisking periodically. The fruity pulp should emulsify with the chicken fat and oil in the pan. Stir in sugar to keep some of that crazy acidity in balance.
Drink with bold, juicy and fresh-feeling red wine. The Primitivo Amphora from Cristiano Guttarolo that we just got in would be delicious here. It has soft edges but buoyant acidity to sink into.
No comments:
Post a Comment