Tag: plum

Plum works

A story of great success and massive failures…

Like every year in June I did my share of plum works. With a garden that produces a lot more fruits that I can handle, I actually spend more time picking fruits to give away rather then cooking them. This year I prepared umeboshi like every year, one for Tokyo and one for Isumi, one plain, one with red shiso. Things were looking really good with both until 3 days ago when I discovered that my preparation in Tokyo was covered with mold. And way too much of it to attempt any rescue operation. Everything went down the thrash… Hopefully the one in Isumi seems to have been doing well and with the beautiful hot weather this weekend it was the perfect day to take them out to dry.

One other thing I made this year was plum and red shiso syrup. Usually I prepare plain syrup, but this year I had some extra shiso so I decided to use it in the syrup. Plum syrup is delicious with cold or hot water and with sparkling water too. With the shiso I find it is much better cold. I gives a beautiful color to the drink too. A nice pink.

Finally, there was one thing I didn’t tested before but I have heard so much about is ume-su 梅酢, not to mistake with ume-shu 梅酒. Ume-su is the liquid you obtain when pressing the plums with salt and in which umeboshi bath until drying. It is basically a mix of fermented plum juice and salt. Ume-su is well known to combat summer heat and because of the salt and mineral it makes the perfect recovery drink. It is used like syrup diluted in water. The salty and plum flavors are super delicious, the one with shiso also. Now that I have tested it I love it and often use it together with syrup to have a good balance of sweet and salty flavor, a perfect drink to use after long time gardening in the heat or playing tennis!

The ume-su can be used to pickle vegetables: cucumber in plain ume-su, daikon, turnips, myoga… in the the shiso one. It will color the vegetables in pink so it’s better to use white vegetables. The ume-su can be kept indefinitely in the fridge for further use, so don’t trash it! If you didn’t have a chance to pickle plums this year, you buy ume-su only at JA shops and local coop shops.

Umeboshi, after 2days sun drying

Plum plum plum…

June is the time for the rainy season, and every day the weather reminds us that, but it is also the season for plum harvesting and plum pickling.

Even though I trimmed many of our plum trees this winter, the amount of fruits they produce it still enormous and it’s also time for giveaways. 1Kg here, 3Kg there… yet the harvesting is tedious and with one rainy day following the previous one, it doesn’t make things easy.

Once harvested I pickled quite a bit of our plums. I usually make plum wine and plum syrup with the green plums and umeboshi with the yellow ones (which is about 7 to 15 days after harvesting the green plums).

But because only our visitors drink umeshu and I still have plenty from last year, and we drink little syrup and again last year I made plenty, I decided to try new recipes. One new syrup recipe and one of savory plums in soya sauce. Because the preparation has to sit for three months I have no idea what it would taste like but just wanted to share that recipe because it looks really nice.

Soya sauce pickled plums

– 1kg of green Japanese plums

– 1/2L of soya sauce

– 4tbs of brown sugar

– 2 pieces of dry konbu (4x4cm)

– a handful of katsuobushi flakes.

Wash the plums and remove the stems. Dry them well. Pick them to make a few small holes in. In a clean and sterile bin, set the plums, add the sugar, the konbu pieces cut in four, the katsuobushi flakes. Cover with the soya sauce. Set to rest for 3 months. Turn the bin every week. We’ll see in the results together in 3 months!!

Have a good week!

Summer teaser

Last weekend and today were really giving a taste of summer. Harvesting from the garden: locats, plums, herbs, sansho, eating in the garden at night, playing tennis and going swimming or bodyboarding right after in the chilly water of the ocean to cool down the body… and now a typhon is coming, it rains and it is cold. It was just a teaser for the coming summer… I didn’t harvest enough locats to make more than fruit salad. But I harvested again about 15kg of plums this weekend and it’s a great time to do some plum job: ume jam, umeboshi, ume syrup…

I like particularly ume jam because it can be eaten right away. All the other you have to wait between one week and one year… and ume jam is perfect with a batch of English scones!!!

The recipe is really simple. The same base as plum jelly except that you don’t use agar agar but instead I put the seeds of 2 apples in a tea bag and cook further, before pouring into boiled glass bins and closing.

Rainy season?

Just back from Australia to Tokyo, and I find that the rainy season is getting near. The air is already quite humid and temperatures are mildly warm or hot. Soon it will be time to harvest the plums in the garden, even hopping it is not too late already… It’s been 3 weeks we haven’t go to the country house… I can easily imagine how green and lush the garden is and the hydrangeas will be all ready to bloom soon.

One thing I like to prepare with plums, other than ume-shu, ume-syrup and umeboshi is plum jam and plum jelly, something that you can enjoy right away and doesn’t have to sit for weeks or months. I am not very good at making jams and preserves but I keep trying. Jelly or yokan (ようかん) is much easier for me… but it uses only a little bit of fruits compared to all we have…

Japanese plum jelly – ume yokan

I used about twenty green large plums, sugar to your liking, agar-agar, and about 2/3L of water.

First wash and remove the stems of the plums, boil the water and add the plums, cook under cover at low heat until the plums are soft and the skin and flesh detach easily. Then add the sugar and the agar-agar (quantity will depend on how hard you like the jelly and how much liquid remains in your pan. Cook at medium heat for 5-10min and then pour in a dish. Wait until it cools down to refrigerate. After 2-3h you can serve, by cutting blocks out of the jelly. That’s it!

Plum compote

You remember probably that I bottled my plum syrup last weekend and I wasn’t sure what to do with the plums. Trashing them was such a waste, and after they had macerated so long in sugar and their juice they’ve lost a lot of sourness and were quite sweet. So I decided to make some compote. I simply put them in a pan, covered with water, boiled them until the water was gone, and magically my completely shriveled plum came back to fleshed ones. I just removed the pits, and that’s it. You can add some kanten to make plum yokan also. In both cases the seasoning is perfect and the taste very mild. Delicious recycled food!!!!

Plum syrup

When I harvested the plums this year I used them mainly for umeshu for my family and plum syrup for me. Indeed, I love to prepare myself some fancy drinks using homemade syrups. They are so much better than anything that can be found of the shelf. Last year I made some strawberry tree (bay berry) syrup and it worked very well. And our neighbor gave us some plum syrup last year and I totally loved it, so it was not an option not to try making some. Since we harvested a real lot of plums this year (30 or 40kg may be… and I didn’t harvest 2 trees because we had too many already!!) I made plenty of syrup and I could try it finally. It’s funny with the syrup making how the plum shriveled which does not happen with the umeshu making. The taste is perfectly sweet and sour. Perfect with sparkling water and ice for a chill out drink, and with just tap water for a light energy drink after workout.

Fruits syrup: 

– 1kg of fruits

– 1kg of candy sugar  

Wash thoroughly the fruits and dry them well with a clothe. For fruits with stem, remove the stems. For fruits that may have tiny bugs, dip them in salted water for 2h before preparing the syrup. In a large bin that is much bigger than the volume of fruits+sugar, lay the washed fruits, add a layer of sugar than fruits, sugar, and finish with a thick layer of sugar. Close the bin tight and wait for a few weeks. That’s all!

Plum trees start to bloom

It’s been a few weeks that the red plum trees in the garden were boiling to bloom, now it’s official plum flower season has started. Even some if the white plum trees have started to bloom too. It is one of my favorite moment in the year. It is still cold but spring is already showing up. I like the beautiful little flowers against the crisp blue sky.  So using the plum as a base I prepared a one-plate lunch with pink small radishes for the color, plain white rice shaped in plum flower (I made 5 little balls that I then compacted together using a piece of cooking wrap), an umeboshi on top. Then scrambled eggs with nori and grilled shiitake with sesame and a drop of sesame oil and soya sauce. And everything ready in 20min (when in a rush cooking rice in a pan is much faster than the rice cooker). And shaping the rice took me the most time because I had no clue how to do it, but I’m quite proud I managed! Happy Setsubun!!!

Food habits

Travelling abroad and eating at some friends’ place, doing some shopping in the local organic supermarkets and trying some local products definitely impacts my food habits. Trying new delicious products or simply eating differently from what we eat in Japan everyday is really interesting. In Germany I was expecting to eat a lot of dark cereal bread like black bread, pumpernickel… and to buy flour to make some, which I did. But at our friend’s place I also tried freshly prepared porridge and I really love it. First milling the oatmeal (or spelt or whatever you want), then preparing some warm liquid: this time on the picture is homemade chai latte, then some fresh topping: plums, and finishing with linen seads and dates. Perfectly nourishing and warm for a chilly autumn morning and before a long forest hike in the Wine county. Hiking, walking being outside, if not possible, swimming, are all for me the best ways to recover from jetlag, together with a good breakfast.

Pancakes and plums

When in Canada our friend C. Gave us a huge jar of peach jam he made. The jam was so delicious that just one month after it is already empty. And of course I totally forgot about it, hoping this delicious jam would be on the breakfast table for ever!!! This morning when I woke up and was thinking about making pancakes for breakfast, I realized there was no more jam… Pancakes without nothing to top them (A. doesn’t like butter nor honey) would be very sad… Luckily I had plenty of fruits and decided to add them to the pancakes directly to create some moisture add recreate a kind of jam effect. I prepared a regular pancake base. Heated a pan and greased with coconut oil, then started to cook the pancakes on one side. For the fruit I opted for juicy plums that I chopped and added to the pancakes while just starting to cook in the pan. The fruits cooked once I flipped the pancakes and the result was quite interesting: pancake taste and texture and clafouti like fruits juicy, sweet and sour. I added a nashi pear for a crunchy-sweet-super juicy refreshing morning plate. Delicious! Have a good day!!!

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