End of Summer Prune Crisp (Yes…Prune. Not Plum!)

Planted as street trees all over Portland in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Italian prunes were as synonymous with this city as the rose is today. By 1927, one source indicates, there were 55,000 acres of Italian prunes growing on farms in Oregon and Clark County, Washington. Despite the efforts of marketing types to rebrand them as plums—prunes being associated with the dried fruit used by elderly folk to aid…um…digestion—they are being grown by farmers all over the state to this day.

I love eating them out of hand and spitting out the pits (yes, I'm still five years old), but I also love them in desserts. The Italian prune crisp pictured above is one of my favorites, plucked, if you will, from my mother's 1950s-era Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook. So simple, it just involves pitting and slicing the fruit, sprinkling it with cinnamon and a mixture of flour, butter and sugar, then popping it the oven. The perfect no-muss, no-fuss, one-pan "modern housewife's" recipe.

Click here for more information on the history of these prunes in Oregon.

Italian Prune Crisp

For the filling:
4-6 c. Italian prunes, pitted and quartered
3/4 c. sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 c. water or fruit liqueur like cassis, triple sec, etc.

For the topping:
3/4 c. flour
1 c. sugar
1/3 c. butter or margarine

Preheat oven to 350°.

Place fruit in 9" by 12" pyrex baking dish. Sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon and salt. Drizzle with water or liqueur.

Put flour, sugar and margarine in bowl of food processor. Pulse until the consistency of cornmeal. (If doing by hand, blend by hand with a metal pastry blender.) Sprinkle evenly over fruit. Bake for 40 min. or until bubbling.

Plummy Cobbler Pairs Perfectly with Plum Sorbet

When I think of making a fruit dessert, my mind naturally goes to a crisp, with its crumbly, granola-esque topping that's the perfect counterpoint to the sweet, cooked fruit beneath it. But some fruit, and I'm thinking of you, stone fruits, seem to pair much better with a cakey biscuit crust, the better to sop up the juices oozing from the warm fruit.

Damn gorgeous, those Damsons!

Recently, friends were due to come over for dinner, so when I got a couple of pounds of very ripe Damson plums and several pounds of Golden Gage plums from Ayers Creek Farm, it seemed only right to make a cobbler with the Damsons. Which inspired Dave to make a sorbet to accompany it, using the Gages for a little plum-on-plum action.

Plum Cobbler

For the filling:
6 c. plums, peeled and sliced
3/4 c. sugar
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
1/4 c. triple sec or other orange liqueur

For the biscuit crust:
2 c. flour
2 Tbsp. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
6 Tbsp. frozen butter or margarine, cut up
1 c. light cream or milk

Heat oven to 425 degrees.

In large bowl, combine filling ingredients and stir gently. Place in 9” by 12” baking dish.

Mix flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in food processor. Pulse to combine. Add butter or margarine in pieces and pulse until it's the consistency of corn meal. Add cream or milk and process till mixed and soft dough forms. Using spatula, scoop out onto heavily floured surface. Roll or pat out, using flour as necessary to make sure it doesn't stick, until dough is the size of your baking dish. Carefully lift it up and lay over fruit.

Bake 25 to 30 minutes, or until the topping is brown and fruit is bubbling around the edge. Let cool at least 10 minutes before serving.

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Plum Sorbet

3 lbs. plums
Juice of 1/2 lime
1 c. sugar
2 Tbsp. vodka (helps keep sorbet from getting icy)

Pit and quarter whole plums, leaving skins on, and place in food processor with lime juice and sugar. Process until it's a fine purée. Pour it into a fine mesh sieve (in batches if necessary) over a large mixing bowl and, using a wooden spoon, stir and press the purée through the sieve. (This step is super easy and not time-consuming, so don't let it put you off.) Stir in the vodka, then place a piece of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the purée. (This keeps it from oxidizing and turning brown.) Place the bowl in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours to chill completely. Put chilled purée in ice cream maker and process according to directions. Place in container in freezer for 2-3 hours, then serve.

Farm Bulletin: Life's a Bowl of…Prunes? Pt. 2

In Part Two of this Farm Bulletin, contributor Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm discusses the much-maligned prune and shares a unique way of curing the immature green fruit. In Part One he discusses the attributes of sour cherries.

Prunes

The stone fruits have three separate layers surrounding the seed and are what botanists call a drupe. The layers are the skin (exocarp), the pulpy flesh (mesocarp) and the hard layer surrounding the seed (endocarp) that the laity call the stone or pit. These three layers are derived from the mother plant's tissues, whereas the seed inside is the result of the sexual union of the sperm produced by the pollen and the mother plant's egg. The various stone fruit have characteristically shaped endocarps. Cherries have round ones, peaches have a large-pitted version, almonds have a softer corky endocarp, and the plums have a very hard asymmetric pit. The seeds have a characteristic bitter almond flavor, and some are toxic when eaten in large quantities. The Boutards have long eaten the seeds of stone fruit without apparent ill effects. In many parts of Europe, it is customary to include some pits to flavor preserves and eau de vies made from stone fruit, just as Sarah [Minnick of Lovely's 50/50] does with her ice cream.

The plums are the most diverse of the stone fruits in terms of types and flavor. This week, we start with a prune bearing the regal name of Imperial Epineuse. The prunes are a class of related plums with a very high solid content of sugars and fiber, which allows them to dry well. They are prunes no matter whether they are fresh or dried. The commerce in dried prunes originated in Hungary in 16th century and spread westwards into France and Germany. The original seedling of Imperial Epineuse was found in an old monastery near Clairac, France. It was introduced to Oregon in the waning days of the 19th century as a dessert prune under the name of Clairac Mammoth, but never gained a following here. Not sure why, as it is easy to grow and more reliable than any of our other stone fruit. A steady cropper, as the Brits would say. The texture is very fine, and pomologists have suggested that it may have a bit of damson in its background. The skin provides a pleasing and contrasting acidic note.

If you have an over-productive prune in your backyard, you can pick the very young fruit in the spring, before the pit has hardened, and cure them just as you would olives. The whole fruit is edible, no need to pit them, and you use them in dishes just as you would olives. We crack the fruits with a mallet and put them in a jar with water, changing it daily until they turn olive green. Last year, we cured them in lye. The cured plums look no different than cured olives; the lye cured plums are dark just like lye cured olives. Publication 8267 from UC Davis gives good directions. We got the idea for curing plums from a visiting Chicago Chef Paul Kahan, who served up a dish with green peaches cured in the same manner. Greg Higgins and his staff cured gage plums and seasoned them with a Tunisian accent. That is the great part of having visitors to the farm, they always leave a new idea or two as they depart.

Illustration of plums at left by Alois Lunzer from the Brown Brothers Continental Nurseries Catalog, 1909.

Farm Bulletin: By the Light of the Silvery Moon

As the brilliant greens, reds and yellows of summer slowly fade into the muted palette of autumn, contributor Anthony Boutard waits for the moon to whisper in his ear that the time is right to plant his fall crops. You can find him at the Hillsdale Farmer's Market every Sunday from 10 am till 2 pm through November 22. The market switches to its twice-a-month winter schedule from December through April.

Like Norma Desmond, our summer crops are showing the ravages of time. The berries, once sweet and succulent are now bitter and seedy, molding even before they are ripe. Culled tomatoes are scattered along the rows like misapplied lipstick. August's verdant bean tresses are yellowing, the leaves dropping to expose drying fruits. The seasonal turbulence is palpable, as summer crops go to seed, autumn fruits ripen and winter greens emerge from the background.

October is a busy time for us. We have started harvesting and curing the winter squash. Ears of flint corn are on racks for the month-long drying. The sweet potatoes will come in next week, and will be put in a very hot, 90 degree room to start curing. It takes about ten days for them to develop the tough skin needed for successful dormancy, and another eight weeks to develop their full sweetness and flavor. The storage grapes need to be harvested and tied up in a warm room.

October is also a important planting month. Barley, wheat, favas and garlic must all go in the ground over the next few weeks. Garlic is planted upon the waning moon, late next week. We will wait to plant the grains as close to the waxing moon as possible, with an eye to the weather. The ground is ready and we have allowed the winter annual weeds to sprout. When ready, we will spread the grains and cover them with a disk harrow, killing off the emerging weeds. Done right, works like a charm, but if we jump the gun, unnerved by the forecast, we will have a weedy mess.

We are really looking forward to this winter's markets. Somehow or another, the plantings all fell into place and the growth of the winter greens and roots has been strong. We will have greater diversity and depth of crops than ever before. It will be great fun.

Anthony includes a note about plums:

Pozegaca is an eastern European prune used to make Slivovitz, the Slavic eau de vie of plum, and Slatko, a plum paste. The plum's flavor is strong and distinctive, and it probably has a fair dose of damson in its heritage, but the shape is pure prune. We have only three trees, so there won't be too many.

We will also have some Coe's Golden Drop (right), a fine dessert plum. It is a hybrid between a greengage and plum called Magnum Bonum. It was introduced to the trade by the famous nurseryman from Bury St. Edmonds, Gervais Coe, in the early 19th century. It is a difficult plum to grow, and we are lucky to have a few this year. Described by Edward Bunyard in The Anatomy of Dessert: "At its best it is a dull yellow green with frecklings of crimson, and at its ripest it is drunk rather than eaten; the skin is rather tough but between this and the stone float an ineffable nectar."

Farm Bulletin: A Tempting Offer

The latest missive from Anthony and Carol contained some disturbing news of their imminent departure:

This will be our final market. A couple weeks ago we received an urgent communication from Mr. Nbokoa Kanabumba asking our help in extracting $100,000,000 from a special account in Lagos, Nigeria. Many of these inquiries are false, but this one was different, he only needed a modest sum from us to assist in the transfer. Cash, no shady intermediaries, and we would receive millions tax free. After several communications, we are sure he is a genuine person, the real McCoy, or at least the real Kanabumba. A quick trip to Lagos, and we can live out our dreams.

After a couple celebratory drinks, we started exploring what we would do with the money. Maybe a small farm in the Willamette Valley, close to people we love, with good soils, and an oak savannah at its heart with lots of birds, spiders, frogs, wasps and termites. The farm would have some orchards, canefields and a good plot of vegetables, verdant during even the darkest days of December. Throw in some long-eared and barn owls as well as acorn woodpeckers, who could ask for anything more. We realized this stunning opportunity lying in Lagos would be wasted upon us. We are glad to pass on the particulars to someone dreaming about that terra cotta Tuscan villa.

We have had a good summer, and appreciate the good cheer with which our fruits and vegetables been received. Now we are preparing for our return on the 4th of November, as well as planting some of next summer's crops. Over the next few weeks, the garlic, shallots, favas, barley and durum wheat for frikeh will be planted. At the same time, we will be harvesting the chestnuts, corn, popcorn, squash and dry beans. Preserves have to be made, and the canefields and orchards must be "put to bed." Lots of work.

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The great French biologist, Lamarck, offered up his own explanation of evolution. He theorized that traits are acquired and developed in response to environment. The classic example is the giraffe, whose long neck, Lamarck speculated, became extended over several generations as the animal stretched to reach treetops. In his lost journals upon which his theories were based, he apparently explored the unique small gland behind the central cortex of every French man and woman. The size and shape of a large cherry, this yellow organ is blushed carmine and accounts for the misty eyed reaction from French expatriates upon spying the mirabelle. Proust can keep his cookies; it is the simple mirabelle with her rustic blush that stirs the Gallic heart.

You can subscribe to Anthony's weekly notices by sending a request via e-mail. Or find him and Carol almost every Sunday at the Hillsdale Farmers Market between 10 am and 2 pm.