Crazy time of the year, one day is summer: 35 and not a single breeze, sudden thunder storm and pouring rain, the next it’s almost chilly. Yet summer fruits start ripening and are delicious. Peaches season has started as well as plums, melons and watermelons season is also well advanced. When this time comes I love to prepare poached fruits, clafoutis and simple tarts where the fruits have the leading part. This time it’s a peach and plum tart. I like the mix of the super sweet peaches and the slightly sour plums. For the dough I prepared a sable dough with oat bran to add a bit of texture. I roll the dough, cut the fruits and bake. That’s all. No added sugar, no flavoring. Just fruits.
A few days ago I saw pictures of bagels on IG and I remembered how easy it is to make some and how delicious it is (my bagel recipe). But I had first to masterize the croissants. Now that I’ve finally managed to make real butter croissants I prepared bagels for this morning. Since it’s bagels for breakfast I prepared plain bagels, and just coated them in sugar and vanilla instead of seeds. And because it’s summer or almost and the melons are ripe and juicy, I also prepared a plum-melon smoothie to go with. Just half green melon and two plums. Have a beautiful Sunday!!
The best way to enjoy umeboshi is with simple plain white rice in my opinion. Since I got a big pot of freshly made little shiso umeboshi from our neighbor (mine are big plums without shiso), I really wanted to try them. I prepared simple white rice, and to make it a dinner I added a little of ginger grilled pork and some little radishes grilles too.
The plum are just freshly pickled and in their juice to they are salty-sour-sweet, very tasty and melting in the mouth. Actually they are delicious without rice too and now I understand why a Japanese traditional snack for kid is umeboshi. There are so many ways to prepare them and so many ways to eat them!!
When I harvested the garden plums I had in mind to try one recipe of simmered plum from my Shojin cuisine book. So I kept 6 of the largest and greenest plums for that recipe. But busy with other things I didn’t prepare them right away and the plum have turned from green to a beautiful orange, and were ripening very quickly. So I decided to go for an other manner to cook them, simply preparing some kind of compote. I put the plums in ample water and boiled them at low heat for 2h under cover; then I drained most of the water and kept only 5 to 10mm in the pan, added 2tbs of brown sugar and simmered at low heat again for 30min without cover, or until almost all the syrup is gone. Instead I obtained a thick jelly (the brown paste in between the plum on the picture).
You can serve the plums warm, at room temperature or cold.
梅雨 literally the plum rain is the perfect word for the Japanese rainy season. In June it’s getting hot and humid and this is the season for harvesting plums. So everywhere it’s about ume-everything: umeshu, umeboshi, ume jam… We have several plum trees in the garden producing every year dozens of kilos of fruits. Unfortunately in the past we haven’t been there in June for the harvest season. Only last and this year we managed to be in Japan and harvest our plums. Last year with the help of Mrs I. I made some umeshu that I’ve just bottled, and is apparently delicious (I can only enjoy its beautiful smell since I don’t drink alcohol anymore). It was actually more simple to do than I expected only it takes a whole year to wait to start drinking it.
This year I decided to make umeboshi with our 85year old neighbor. She promised me this winter to teach me and since then I’ve looking forward to it. The day finally came! I harvested some of our plums Saturday, washed them and had then bath in a lot of water for a whole night and yesterday I prepared my first umeboshi. Here again it was much simpler than I expected. It’s only salt and plums. And time. Bonus before I can enjoy our umeboshi obasan gave me 25year old umeboshi. Something I’m looking forward to try too very soon!! I’ll keep you updated!
One more thing I love about this season too, this is also the season for vibrant greens and colorful hydrangeas blooming under grey skies, giving this special and beautiful rainy season light and colors to the country.
It is extremely rare I cook something sweet for dessert, or I cook dessert at all. Unless we have guests for dinner our meals end sometimes with a fruit, sometimes a yogurt but most often with just a little piece of chocolate. In the trading with our neighbor, fruits from our garden in exchange whatever she has, the other day she gave some plum jam and she told me: “you know, it’s sour, but it’s really good in plum jelly!”. OK then, let’s make some plum jelly (梅羊羹-ume youkan)… Well it’s really simple and it works also with any jam you like (I trued also with my natsumikan jam). You need only a flat recipient, some jam, 1/2L of water and a little bag of agar-agar or 寒天-kanten. Boil the water in a pan, add the jam, then the kanten, stir well while still heating for a few minutes. Set in the flat recipient and wait for the liquid to cool down, then refregirate. Before serving cut in pieces of the shape you fancy.
Remember, last week our little old neighbor gave us some of her special ginger and goya preparation.
Since I harvested to many persimmons (and there are still plenty to come) and I don’t know what to do with all these, I gave her a few and then she came back with more of her special pickles and preparations. So this week I managed to deal with her to teach me how to prepare the goya and the ginger, so hopefully I’ll share with you that very soon. She also gave us umeboshi and pickled myoga. Super delicious with plain rice! And plum jam. I’m looking forward to June, the harvest season for plums! This time I want to try to make umeboshi too!!!
Thanks a lot Obasan!!!
By the way, if you live in Tokyo and want persimmons, let me know before the birds have them all!!
It is rare that I cook desserts, unless we have guests, because we usually snack around 17h and dine around 21h, so I prefer to fix us something good for our five o’clock snack: small cakes, tarts, crepes, always with fresh ingredients, seasonal fruits etc… and skip the dessert. But with the heat recently, we’ve just snacked on fresh fruits and I decided to prepare something that I don’t often cook: fruits crumble. It’s strange enough that I always forgot about crumbles and bake tarts often. Maybe because it always ends up with no shape and it’s not as elegant as a tart or a clafouti where the fruits are perfectly aligned (control freak!). Well tonight I’ve made one and I wish I could share with you the delicious smell of my kitchen!
I used a random recipe (without really caring for the quantity but more the texture) for the crumbs mixing flour, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, butter and vanilla. For the fruits I used fresh blueberries, peaches and plums. Cut the fruits in bite size, make a layer of fruits in a pie dish and then add the crumbs on top. Baked 30min at 190deg. And it’s ready to eat after it has cooled down.
One of the plum tree in the garden, covered with plum
Prunellia’s post on her favorite Japanese drink is timely because it is just the season to harvest plums and to prepare umeshu. In our garden we have a lot of plum trees and each year they produce a lot of fruits. Last year for the first time the fruits were harvested and used to prepare umeshu. As Prunellia mentioned, Umeshu is prepared from still green plums and usually with shochu (a white traditional alcoholic drink made of rice, potato, sweet potato…). The recipe used here to prepare the Umeshu uses nihonshu, which is regular Japanese sake or rice wine and gives a milder taste to the preparation. I’ve got the recipe from a lady living nearby. Actually last year she prepared the umeshu with our fruits, but this year I was very much tempted to prepare some myself, so she gave me her recipe and helped me out for my first time.
Umeshu from 2014 harvested plum just ready!
The recipe is really simple, but be aware unlike a lot of alcoholic preparations that are ready in 60 or 90 days (peach wine, verbena liquor… that I used to prepare according to my grand mother recipes), this one takes a whole year (you can try earlier but one year guaranties the best taste/color).
You need Japanese hard plums, rock sugar, sake or shochu, and a large jar (usually plastic or glass) with a tight lid and a big mouth to fit the plums in. First wash the plum and remove the stems, then wash again and dry them properly. Weight the plums that can fit 3/4 of the jar, weight the half amount of rock sugar. Clean and dry perfectly the jar and then pick the plums with a fork a few times around and make layers of plum and rock sugar until the 3/4 has been reached. Cover with the sake or shochu up to 2-3cm higher than the level of fruits and sugar. Close the lid tightly, store in a cool and dark place for almost a year. Once in a while you can shake the jar to help the sugar melt.
Prunellia, I’m counting on you to come next spring or summer to try my homemade umeshu with the plums from the garden!
