‘Beauty’ Plums

This post is dedicated to my ‘Beauty’ plums (Prunus salicina “Beauty’) which have, during the last few years, given us an abundant supply of summer’s nectar: this succulent plum is the kind that you throw into your mouth, and the sweet pulpy meat just explodes, saturating your taste buds with its warm juice.

In order to celebrate these little sweet bombs, I made plum liqueur that closely resembles Japanese umeshu, which my grandma used to make. I still remember sipping it “on the rocks” with her during horribly humid Japanese summers to help cool off (Oh, I was a minor!). I adapted the recipe from youngish Japanese plum farmers in Wakayama, the country’s No. 1 plum production center. My plums are technically a different species from those in Japanese umeshu, but yield a very similar taste. After all, I only made one minor change to last year’s plum schnapps recipe: I submerged the plums in vodka with white rock sugar. I’ll keep you posted on how this worked for doneness, and will complete the recipe according to my findings from this experimentation.

I have also braised the plums with pork using the idea from my all-time favourite book: Sensational Sauces by Linda Collister. Braising the pork with dry fruits is the book’s recommendation, but here I experimented with fresh plums and the dish emerged with a pleasing taste reminiscent of sweet and sour pork. Plums mask the sweetness in chicken broth; thus it got quite tart, but I used them together to create the gravy that gives the dish an appetizing kick in the heat of summer.


Lastly, I have turned more plums into jelly! We smear it on crackers, pour over ice cream, and drizzle on cheese scones. What’s left to do with these beauties? Bake a cake or two?

In the meantime, we are truly enjoying last year’s plum schnapps.

 

Braised Pork and Plums

Serves 4 -6

6 pork loin chops
Salt and pepper
All-purpose flour
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 yellow onion, wedged
1 ½ cups chicken stock
A dozen plums, rinsed
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
A few sprigs of fresh thyme

Preheat the oven to 350F. Rinse the pork and pat dry. Salt and pepper the pork, and coat with flour on both sides.

Heat the oil in a large heavy bottomed ovenproof pan over medium high heat. Sear the pork on both sides until browned. Remove from the pan and set aside.

Sauté the onion until transparent, add the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Make sure to scrape any bits of sediment from the pan and dissolve in the stock.

Bring back the pork chops, and then scatter the plums, balsamic vinegar and thyme in any openings in the pan. Place the pan in the oven and roast until pork is done, for about 35 minutes.

Remove the pork and reduce the liquid to make gravy, about half the original amount. Discard the plums and serve the pork on individual plates. Serve immediately with gravy.

Plum Jelly

The hard part about making this jelly is to skim it tirelessly in an effort to prevent it from displaying an unpleasant bitterness.

Makes 9 x 250ml jars

2 large bowlfuls of ‘Beauty’ plums
Granulated sugar

Rinse the plums well and place them in a heavy bottomed pot. Bring to a simmer and continue until pulp separates from the pits, for about 35 to 40 minutes.

Strain the plums through a piece of doubled cheesecloth overnight (I use a stool flipped upside down and tie the corners of the cloth to the cross bars to form a bag, placing a pot underneath).

Measure the liquid with a measuring cup, place it in a large pot and bring to a boil. Then, add 1 cup of sugar for every cup of liquid. Continue to boil to dissolve the sugar. Make sure to scrape from the sides of the pot so as not to leave any sugar behind. Continue boiling until the setting point is reached, for about 15 minutes. Skim as necessary. Remove from the heat. Test the doneness. Drop a teaspoonful of the jelly on a cold (refrigerated) plate and spread; then, push with your fingertips. If it crinkles, it has reached the setting point. Even if the liquid may seem loose, it will get thicker when cooled down.

Pour into warm, sterilized dried jars. Seal and store in a dark, cool place.

Ahi Tuna Confit and New Potato Salad

The summer season is rolling in, yet I’m still waiting for my tomatoes and cucumbers to swell and colour. Meanwhile, I’m enjoying making super easy pickles with the tenderest radishes that I picked up from the farmer’s market (yes, I shamefully admit that I don’t really have success with them in my garden), and am thoroughly relishing plum season! Thanks to the heat, the plums have arrived much earlier than the last few years’ harvests. I’m planning to make another batch of plum liquor similar to my experiment from last year, using a slightly different method, and will definitely post the results when the time comes.

Today, I’d like to introduce an Ahi tuna confit that I learned to make 13 years ago (actually 20 years ago, if you include the version I encountered in a Nicoise salad in a fancy café in Tokyo that I subsequently tried to replicate with canned tuna!). However, it hadn’t occurred to me to create this dish again until recently, probably because the “dunk tuna in oil and cook” part somehow put me off in the kitchen. So I have come to use as little oil as possible by carefully swirling it in a small deep saucepan. Once you know how, it may be the simplest yet tastiest and nicest way to send an ode to the season’s new potatoes. Surprisingly, it is actually light enough that we could eat it as a late dinner after a long bike ride!




Ahi Tuna Confit and New Potato Salad

Serves 2 hungry diners

Ahi tuna confit

½ pound fresh Ahi tuna, 1 inch thick slices
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 to 2 garlic cloves, crushed
A few sprigs fresh thyme
A few sprigs fresh sweet marjoram
A few strips organic lemon rind
1 teaspoon capers
A few coarsely cracked peppercorns
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1 to 2 bay leaves

Place the tuna in the smallest container possible, so that the tuna just fits. Cover with the oil and add the rest of the flavourings. Marinate for 20 minutes.

Transfer the content of the container to a saucepan that is deep enough with a long handle so you feel comfortable swirling during cooking.

Bring the oil to 150F over medium heat and maintain the temperature. Swirl the oil very, VERY carefully as not to spill, and evenly cook the tuna until done, for about 10 to 15 minutes.

Remove from heat, let cool.

If you are not using the tuna right away, transfer to a glass container, cover and refrigerate. Make sure that the tuna is submerged completely in the oil.

New potato salad

I like mixing waxy potatoes with starchy ones, such as fingerlings and russets for this recipe to give it a different texture. I grow French fingerling, Yukon Gold and Russian Blue potatoes.

A medium bowlful of new potatoes
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
½ cup mixture of white wine vinegar and red wine vinegar, or rice wine vinegar
2 teaspoons capers
A sprig of fresh thyme, leaves stripped
½ red onion, thinly sliced
½ cup pitted olives
Cherry tomatoes, wedged
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Place the well-washed potatoes in a large pot with water and bring to a boil. Add a pinch of salt and cook until tender. Drain well.

In the meantime, combine the oil, vinegar, capers, thyme, onion and olives in a large mixing bowl.

Add the just-cooked potatoes and let cool in the marinade. Adjust with salt and pepper. Cover and refrigerate for a couple of hours.

Assemble the salad

Place the potato salad in an individual plate. Break off the confit and toss atop the potatoes along with the tomatoes. Pour the oil/vinegar mixture from the bottom of the mixing bowl over top. Serve immediately.

Berry Tart

Phew! I was finally able to put this tart together using berries that seemed to explode with sudden heat. Working with nature is so unpredictable. Waiting for much needed sun, and then now, trying to catch up with watering and picking all the berries that otherwise would be wasted.

If you blog about homemade creations, you know it is not always glorious, and that flawless-looking food doesn’t appear effortlessly. There are lots of trials and failures, and also some anger and frustration, with pots and dough flying about the kitchen (perhaps?) behind the scenes. Although I haven’t let myself go that far yet, I might actually have more posts if I wrote about those stories instead!

This post presents a good example of occasional kitchen chaos. The tart shell making really stressed me out, especially since it wasn’t easy to put the dough together given the heat that has finally arrived. I know it is hard for some people, including me, to accept that the best way to conquer the shell-making task is to try not to be perfect. I was calm the first time, but found myself really frustrated after the second round. Yes, I ended up with two shells just trying to make one picture-perfect shell!

Is your dough torn and sticky? Don’t worry about it! This dough is so forgiving, you can just handle it like Play-doh. Patch as necessary and try to work as quickly as possible. For the best result, choose the coolest time of day to make your tart shells.

On a related note, I managed to pick all my black currants, and submerged them in vodka to make crème de cassis for the first time. I will follow up on this one later this year.

Berry Tart

I find it easier to prepare the dough at night and store it overnight to let it completely solidify, especially in summer months, as the dough tends to get sticky in the heat. And then, I prepare the pastry cream at the same time as the dough making so that I can assemble the tart next day with a little more ease.

Makes a 9 ½ inch tart ring

Dough
½ cup salted butter, room temperature
1/3 cup granulated sugar
½ egg, lightly beaten
¼ cup almond meal
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons cake flour, sifted

Pastry cream
2 cups whole milk
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise and scraped
6 large egg yolks
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1/3 cup cornstarch sifted
1 tablespoon butter, room temperature
½ cup whipping cream

Toppings
3 figs
1 cup raspberries
1 cup blueberries
1 cup gooseberries
A dozen or so red currant tassels

Place the butter in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until creamy. Add sugar, and continue to pulse until fluffy. Scrape the sides of the bowl as necessary. Add the egg and pulse until incorporated. Then, add the flour and pulse until the dough just comes together.

Form into a disk and wrap with a piece of plastic or place in a Ziploc bag; store in a refrigerator for at least 4 hours.

Make the pastry cream. Place the milk and vanilla bean (pulp and pod) in a medium sized saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Remove the pan, cover and let steep for 10 minutes to infuse the flavour of the vanilla.

Fill a large bowl with ice cubes, and set aside a small bowl that can hold the finished cream and be placed in this ice bath. Set a sieve aside.

Whisk the yolks, sugar and cornstarch together in a medium-sized bowl. Whisking all the while, slowly drizzle a quarter of the hot milk into the yolk mixture. Continue to whisk while adding the rest of the milk to the tempered yolks in a steady stream. Remove and discard the pod.

Place the yolk mixture back into the pan and, while whisking, bring to a boil over high heat. Continue to whisk vigorously for a couple of minutes; you will start to feel the resistance from the yolk mixture. Remove from the heat and press the cream through the sieve into the reserved small bowl. Add some cold water to the ice bath and set the bowl inside. Stir continuously until the cream is no longer hot. Add the butter and whipping cream, stir to incorporate and continue until completely cool. Refrigerate until assembling time.

Prepare the dough. Butter the tart ring, dust some flour and place on a piece of parchment paper on a baking sheet. Keep it refrigerated.

Flour the working surface and roll the dough with a rolling pin to a size large enough to cover the ring. If it is difficult to manage, roll the dough in between two sheets of parchment paper, being careful not to make creases. Transfer the dough by rolling it around the pin and unrolling onto the ring. Gently fit the dough into the bottom and up the sides with your fingers. Run the pin across the top of the pan to remove the excess dough. If there are tears or a part is too thin, just relax; you can patch with the excess dough. Use the tines of a fork to make small holes all over the bottom of the tart shell. Keep refrigerated for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Place a piece of parchment paper inside the tart shell, and fill with dried beans. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, then remove the parchment and beans, and bake for another 5 minutes or until golden. Transfer the shell to a rack to cool.

Assembling
Rinse all the fruit and pat dry. Figs can be sliced or wedged. Place the shell on a cake stand or large platter, and fill evenly with the pastry cream. Arrange the figs, raspberries, blueberries and gooseberries on top. Finish by laying the red currant tassels over top. Refrigerate until serving time.

Tart is best served the day it is made.