Food

From top to bottom:
Plum Crisp
Tiny plums
Pflaumen Kuchen

ANNABEL COHEN

Special to the Jewish News

I

can't help but remember a
scene from the film The
English Patient. The lead char-
acter is dying from burns and
injuries sustained in a crash during
World War II. They are holed up in
an abandoned Italian villa with very
little to eat.
The nurse comes in one sunny
summer afternoon with small Italian
plums. She cuts one and feeds the
patient a piece. He then declares,
"It's a plumb plum."
I know what he means. One of the
greatest culinary benefits of summer is
the prodigality of soft fruit — peach-
es, plums, nectarines and cherries.
And the abundance of these stone
fruits is truly something to hold dear,
for the season is fleeting.
So when the dog days roll around,
fruit bowls around the country are
often filled to brimming with these
juiciest of produce. What to do,
though, when purchase exceeds con-
sumption capacity? Cook and bake-
up summer plums in a seemingly
endless number of ways while these
fruits are at their peak.
First, a little plum history. Most
likely, plums were first cultivated in
China and the Far East. And though
there are several varieties of plums,
most can be divided into two care-

8/13
1999

1106 Detroit Jewish News

Its only
natural
to be crazy
for plums
in August.

gories: fruits you eat and fruits you
cook with. Though you can cook
with the types that are most palat-
able, cooking plums are best used
only in jams, sauces and such.
Plums range in size from quite
small, like a cherry, to those giants
we sometimes see in the market —
up to three inches across. They vary
in color, too, from very pale yellow
and light green to deep reds and
purples that appear almost black.
Most of the plums you see in
American stores are California-
grown and probably of the Japanese
variety, brought to California by
Japanese settlers. But plums are also
cultivated throughout the northern
United States and in Michigan.
Look in cookbooks from around the
world and you'll most likely find
recipes with plums — Chinese plum

Ripening
Plums

For cooking, it's probably a
good idea to buy some plums
that aren't quite as ripe as those
you would eat immediately.
When you want to eat the
fruit fast, you can quicken the
ripening process by placing the
plums in a paper bag — rolling
it closed — and leaving it in a
dry place, out of direct sun-
light, at room temperature for a
day or two.
For an even speedier process,
drop an apple or a banana in
the bag along with the plums.