Red Plums with Port
Sherry Trifle with Plums
Plum Pie with Almond Cream
Plum and Almond Crumble
Duck with Plum Sauce
Summer Fruit Amaretti Crumble
Roast Peaches with Amaretti
Silk, satin, cotton, rags
Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief
This year, next year, some time, never
Coach, carriage, wheel barrow, dung cart
When Ben was growing up during the war in Cornwall, it wasn’t always easy to get fresh fruit. He remembers oranges, crates of oranges, floating in on the tide, bobbing about in the harbour like rare jewels. He didn’t see his first banana until he was in long trousers. In those days and until relatively recently, pudding was an integral part of the main meal of the day. Betty, like other housewives throughout the country, relied on dried fruit, particularly prunes, which were soaked overnight, then stewed until soft. Ben used to have them with custard: ‘. . . and I always had to have five, so I could count good fortune’. In these abundant times, fresh plums have taken over from prunes and they too are delicious stewed in their own juices with sugar. They are good with custard, yoghurt or ice cream, or over cornflakes, but can be turned into a lovely purée to serve with sliced fresh bananas, or to dribble over vanilla ice cream. They are good in trifles with soft Amaretti macaroons, whipped cream and toasted almonds and can be used to make some quintessential English summer puddings, such as plum fool, plum summer pudding and plum sorbets.
I’m always trying out new ways of flavouring stewed plums. Any spice, from cloves and cinnamon, to cardamom and ginger, goes wonderfully well, as do star anise and vanilla. Different sugars also change the flavour in a subtle but noticeable way. Icing sugar and caster sugar sweeten without adding anything extra, but muscovado and other golden and brown sugars, now available in a wide range of organic and unrefined, insinuate their distinctive flavour with great charm. Wine is another good partner to plums. I’ve had great success with fruity sweet wines such as Muscat de Beaume de Venise, but my all-time favourite is ruby red port. Sometimes I cook the plums whole, very slowly, in a covered dish in the oven. They look very pretty if they are halved round their plumpness but the stones can be a fiddle to remove.
Greengages are a very special plum with a short season. There is no mistaking their pretty pale green colour and if you are unfamiliar with their sweet greenish-yellow flesh, you are in for a delicious surprise. Their size and texture and loose stone always remind me of apricots and they can be treated in much the same way. Try them halved round their middles and briefly cooked in a light sugar syrup. Serve them lukewarm with cream. They are delicious puréed with a hint of vanilla and set with gelatine to make jellies. Greengages love almonds. Combine them in a tart or use ground almonds to make greengage crumble.
I have yet to come across peaches growing in Mousehole but they are always abundant in the shops throughout the summer. I particularly include them because Ben has made a speciality out of stuffing them with almond ratafias.
A blessedly easy dessert to make, so delicious, and it goes with so many things. To appreciate their full flavour, serve the plums lukewarm or cold.
750g red plums
6 tbsp light muscovado sugar
4 tbsp port
4 tbsp water
Slice the flesh off the plums in large chunks, probably about 5 pieces per plum, and place in a suitable saucepan. Add the sugar, port and water. Place the pan over a medium-low heat and swirl the pan as the sugar melts and the liquid comes up to the boil. Reduce the heat, cover the pan and simmer briskly for 5 minutes until the pieces of plum are just-tender to the point of a sharp knife. Turn off the heat and leave the pan covered for at least 10 minutes, preferably until lukewarm or cold. There will be plenty of juice and the plums will be meltingly tender. Serve with custard and cream or ice cream.
It is necessary to start this lovely old-fashioned trifle well in advance because both plums and the finished dish need to be chilled. The top is finished in the traditional way with a thick layer of cream and decorated with silver balls and angelica. It is important, however, that the trifle is thoroughly chilled before it’s decorated, otherwise the silver from the balls begins to melt into the cream. If necessary, the trifle could be made up to 24 hours in advance. However long it is left to set, this trifle will always retain a soft and gooey texture on account of shop-bought, ready-made custard having a pouring consistency. Were you to make it with home made custard or Bird’s custard powder, you would get a firmer finish redolent of the rock-hard jelly trifles of my childhood.
750g plums
1 vanilla pod
3 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp water
200g soft macaroons
2–3 tbsp sherry
300g whipping cream
500g carton M&S fresh egg custard
30g angelica
1 tbsp silver cake decorating balls
Slice the flesh off the plum stones in several big chunks. Place the vanilla pod, sugar and water in a saucepan large enough to hold the plums too. Heat gently, swirling the pan until the sugar melts. Add the plums, cover the pan, increase the heat and cook for about 10 minutes until the plums are tender. Tip into a bowl and leave to cool. If you’re in a hurry, I find that popping the pan into the freezer does the job in about 15 minutes. Cut the macaroons into quarters and place in a suitable bowl, preferably a glass one so that you can see the layers of trifle. Pour the sherry over the top, tipping the bowl so it is absorbed into the macaroons. Whip the cream until it forms soft peaks, stopping before it turns hard and grainy. Spoon half the plums over the macaroons, cover with a layer of cold custard and another of cream. Spoon the rest of the plums over the top and repeat the layers, ensuring there is a luxuriously thick layer of cream on top. Smooth the top and use a fork to make a few swirls round the edges. Cover with cling-film and chill for as long as possible and at least 30 minutes.
Slice the angelica thinly and decorate the top of the trifle with silver balls and angelica. Finish with a few swirls of the thick, plum juices that will remain in the pan.
All plums, be they small, black damsons, golden-green greengages or burgundy-red Victorias, are delicious in pies.
The quickest and easiest way to achieve that heavenly combination of buttery pastry with sugary yet still sour plums is with ready-made puff pastry. Roll out an oblong slab and make slits across one side at regular intervals. Lay stoned and chopped plums on the uncut side, sprinkle with sugar then paint a border with water before folding over the slatted side and crimp to seal. Paint the top with beaten egg, dredge with sugar and bake for 20 minutes to be greeted with a mouth watering, golden pastry oozing with plum juice. If you want to personalize your tart, add chopped almonds, walnuts or pistachios, with a hint of cinnamon or ground allspice.
This pie takes slightly longer to make and three times as long to cook but it really is the Rolls-Royce of plum pies. Ground almonds are mixed with melted butter, sugar and egg to make a soft almond cream, which provides a deliciously sweet, buttery and grainy background for the juicy, soft plums. With the noticeably tender, golden pastry, which is made with yoghurt instead of water, you end up with mouthfuls of pudding heaven.
250g flour plus extra for dusting
300g butter plus an extra knob
3 tbsp natural yoghurt
100g ground almonds
100g sugar plus 1 tbsp
500g Victoria plums
splash of milk
Pre-heat the oven to 425°F/220°C/gas mark 7. Sift the flour into the bowl of a food processor or mixing bowl. Dice 200g butter directly into the flour and, if using a machine, pulse briefly to mix. Alternatively, rub the butter into the flour with your hands. Mix in the yoghurt and let it form into a clump, kneading the dough a little to form it into a ball. Rest the dough for at least 15 minutes, preferably 30, to avoid shrinking as it cooks.
Chose a flan tin of about 22cm diameter. Grease it generously with a knob of butter, going over the sides as well as the base. Dust with flour, shaking away the excess. Set aside about one-third of the pastry to make a lid, then roll out the rest on a floured surface to fit the tin, coming up the sides and leaving a generous overhang. Melt the remaining butter in a small pan, then remove from the heat and stir in the ground almonds, 100g sugar and one beaten egg. Spoon the thick but sloppy mixture into the dough-lined tin. Coarsely chop the plums and discard the stones. Pile the plums over the almond cream. Roll out the lid to fit the overhang. Dampen the overhang with water and position the lid, press the edges and then roll towards the middle to make a secure binding. Mix the remaining egg with a splash of milk and paint the surface of the pie generously, taking special care to ‘glue’ the edges. Dredge with sugar. Bake for 10 minutes then reduce the heat to 400°F/200°C/gas mark 6 for a further 40 minutes. If the top is browning too quickly, cover loosely with tin foil. Serve hot with clotted cream.
It’s so light, everyone always says, when they slide a spoon through the golden lumpy mess that looks, to all intents and purposes, like any other crumble. This one, though, is made with equal quantities of ground almonds and the usual flour, butter and sugar and it’s the nuts that keep the crumble deliciously light and crumbly. I first came across the idea of adding nuts to the crumble mixture via a friend, the novelist Paul Bailey, and he’d found the recipe in Jane Grigson’s seminal Fruit Book. She matched this light, elegant crumble with apricots and it suits similar stone fruits such as peaches and nectarines but is lovely too with raspberries or a mixture of raspberries and peaches. The ratio of crumble to fruit in this recipe is, to my mind, perfect but if you prefer more crumble to fruit, then increase the quantities by a third. Another tip I got from Paul is to cook the crumble before the main course so that it is sitting on the side while you eat and will be at the optimum, warm rather than mouth-burning hot, temperature when you are ready for it. Serve it with hot or cold custard, thick cream or vanilla ice cream.
600g Victoria plums
100g caster sugar plus 1 tbsp
100g flour
100g ground almonds
100g butter
Pre-heat the oven to 400°F/200°C/gas mark 6. Quarter the plums lengthways and discard the stones. Tip the plums into a gratin-style ceramic dish with a 2-litre capacity and sprinkle the tablespoon of sugar over the top. Mix together 75g sugar, flour and almonds in a mixing bowl. Cut the butter into small pieces directly over the top and use your fingers to rub it into the mixture. Tip the crumble mixture over the plums, spreading it out evenly. Cook in the oven for 25 minutes until the crumble is a pale golden colour and the juices from the plums are starting to bubble up round the edges. If you think the crumble is colouring to quickly, cover it loosely with tinfoil. Allow the crumble to cool slightly before eating.
I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to summer soft fruit. Nothing, I reckon, can beat a bowl of plump, ripe raspberries with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Or small, super-sweet British strawberries with clotted cream. And the joy of a ripe peach is a private affair. There are times, through, when it’s good to mix this luscious munificence in a fruit salad or a crumble. This crumble is made with crushed macaroons and their sweet almond crunch goes wonderfully well with the fruit. The icing on the cake is a purée of strawberries. Serve the crumble at room temperature.
3 ripe nectarines or peaches
170g raspberries
125g redcurrants
2 tbsp sugar
100g Amaretti macaroons
25g butter
200g strawberries
clotted cream or ice cream to serve
Pre-heat the oven to 400°F/200°C/gas mark 6. Remove the skin from the nectarines or peaches. If the skin doesn’t come away easily, place the fruit in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Count to 20, drain and splash with cold water before removing the skin. Cut into small chunks or dice. Rinse the raspberries and redcurrants. Shake dry. Strip the red-currants from the stalks directly into a gratin-style china dish that can hold the fruit comfortably in a thick layer with enough room for the top-ping. Add raspberries and peaches or nectarines. Mix the fruit together in the bowl and then sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of sugar. Tip the macaroons into a dish and use the end of a rolling pin to crush into coarse lumps. Melt the butter in a frying pan and, off the heat, add the macaroons and stir thoroughly so all the pieces are coated with butter. Spoon the crumbs over the fruit. Cook in the oven for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, remove the stalks from the strawberries and cut them into quarters. Place in a bowl and sprinkle over the remaining sugar. Stir well and leave for a couple of minutes before stirring again to encourage the sugar to dissolve. When all the sugar has disappeared and the strawberries are juicy, tip them into a sieve placed over a bowl. Use the back of spoon to force the strawberries through the sieve. Stir, collecting all the pulp under the sieve, to make a thick coulis. Serve the crumble with a dollop of cream or ice cream and a share of the coulis.
This is Ben’s pièce de résistance.
6 ripe peaches
1 vanilla pod or ½ tsp vanilla essence
large wine glass Amaretto
4 Amaretti macaroons
thick cream to serve
Run a sharp knife round the middle of the peaches, twist apart and discard the stones. Split the vanilla pod, scrape out the seeds and stir into the Amaretto. Grill the peaches or roast in a hot oven (pre-heated to 400°F/200°C/gas mark 6) until tender. Spoon the Amaretto and vanilla into the cavities and leave the peaches to cool. When cold, crumble the macaroons into the cavities. Serve with cream.