Back in the kitchen with plums!

I can't believe it is almost a year since I have published my blog.  It is not that I have not cooked but I suppose that time and energy were on the low side.  For those of you who have not done it, writing a blog is a lot of work.  But it might be the cooler September air, or some unknown source of inspiration, and now I'm back and ready to take the rust off.

This post is somewhat a tale of an unsuccessful attempt at canning.  Even though my mother used to make jams, preserves, pickles and can tomatoes for the winter, my participation in those endeavors was limited to help cleaning fruit and vegetables and stirring the mixtures in the pot.  The science of canning (i.e., temperature and timing) escaped me. My friend Joan, instead, has everything under control when it comes to canning.  Her products have even won blue ribbons at state country fairs.  You may want to visit her blog, http://www.farmtojar.blogspot.com/   After making jams and preserves a couple of times with Joan, I wanted to go "solo".

I had been craving plum jam and I have had hard time finding it in stores. Plus homemade jam is generally superior to the store bought one.  I needed Italian plums, that is the long, purple prunes whose pit can be easily removed.  Sure you can make jam using round plums but they are harder to work with and I think they might also have higher water content.  Finding Italian plums was not an easy task.  My husband Brian and I went to two farmers' markets in the area, Scotch Plain and Westfield, and neither had them.  Also let's be frank: I love farmers' markets but I think that the produce they sell is too expensive for making jams.  Maybe it is because of my Italian background and of being raised in a family that had access to free produce from relatives who lived on farms or by foraging it.  But I cannot get myself to pay $3.00 a pound for fruit to make jam.  In any case since they did not have what I was looking for, we drove to Corrado's, a huge Italian supermarket in Clifton, N.J. that in the summer becomes canning heaven.  Sometimes the quality of the produce there can be disappointing, but not this time.  They had tons of healthy, Italian plums at $.99 a pound!  Since I had committed myself to making jam, I did not get tomatoes but they sold San Marzano variety for $18.00 a bushel.  (On a note, I'd like to add that on Sunday we went to the market in Trenton and that is also a canning paradise when it comes to balancing quality and price.) We proceeded to the cashier with eight pounds of plums, glass jars and pectin.  On the way back home, at Target, I armed myself with a canning kit (tongues to left the hot jars, funnel with a wide mouth to pour the product into the jars, a lid wand to handle the metal lids and rings, and a plastic tool to remove air from the jars).  I also bought the Ball Blue Book to use as a reference.

I was ready.  My plan was to make some plum jam and to can some of the prunes in syrup.  My aunt Maria used to preserve plums that were delicious in part, I suppose, for the quality of the raw product her trees gave her.    Now she is gone and I have not had them for years.  Last time I had bought them at the supermarket I had to throw them away because of their chemical taste.  I really had a craving for them.  So I started with Brian's help to prepare the plums by cutting them in half.  I also made a syrup with water and sugar to preserve some them in jars.  Everything seemed to go fine until we put the jars into a big pot with boiling water.  I did not have a rack to hold the jars in place.  The jars started shaking against each other and we were afraid they would break. But did my mother use a rack? No, so why should I then? However, I had forgotten that probably my mother avoided breaking the jars by wrapping them in rags. We lowered the flame, instead.  I started being concerned about my jars when I realized that the lids were not popping as I had seen Joan's lids do.  Brian went to read the Blue Book we had bought at Target and realized that the filled jars should have stayed in at least 180 degrees F water.  The temperature of our water was more like 160 degrees F.  The result is that even though my jam and preserved plums taste good they are not safe for long storage; they need to be kept in the fridge and consumed fast.  So much for savoring plums in the winter!

Today's I decided to make a big dent in the preserved plums by making a tart.  I looked on the internet for inspiration and the first recipe to appear was by Ina Garner.  I'm not a big fan of the Barefoot Contessa, but the recipe seemed pretty straight forward.  What I liked the most was that it did not require resting the dough for an hour or longer. 

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/plum-tart-recipe2/index.html

I tried to replicate it but I introduced some variations partially by necessity (e.g., using my preserved plums instead of the firm Italian plum Ina's recipe calls for - my plum were firm but before preserving them!), partially by choice (e.g, using whole wheat flour instead of all purpose flour).  Some other differences came about because I did not read the recipe carefully enough so I placed the plums with the skin up instead of down. 

I'm not giving up on canning.  I promise you'll see more of my adventures in future postings.


Plum Tart

Ingredients

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 3/4 cup finely chopped walnuts
• 3/4 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
• 12 tablespoons cold unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), diced
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 1/2 pounds Italian plums preserved in syrup

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Combine the flour, walnuts, and sugar in a large bowl. Add the butter and the egg yolk. Mix, either by hand or with an electric mixer, until crumbly.
3. Press 1 1/2 cups of the crumb mixture in an even layer into the bottom of a 9 1/2-inch spring form.  Arrange the plums in the pan, skin side up, to form a flower pattern
4. Sprinkle the rest of the crumb mixture evenly over the plums. Bake the tart for 50 minutes. 
5. Remove from the oven and cool for 10 minutes. Remove from the pan and transfer the tart to a flat plate. Serve warm or at room temperature.