Prune Plum Crisp

It's embarrassing really.  I've been on this earth for decades and decades and have never known that prune plums existed.  Holy smokes...have I been missing out on this small, gorgeous fruit.

Still, I confess that I have never been much of a plum eater.  Why you ask?  Well, I never liked the fact that I couldn't tell when they were juicy-ripe.  In addition, they are small, so you need to have more than one or two...and if only one is really good, or neither is very good, then I'm kind of going to lose my interest.  Also, the pit's stranglehold on the fruit has never pleased me.  I had a few close calls as a kid with putting a half-eaten plum into my mouth to extricate the fruit from the pit only to have the whole thing propel to my throat for one-scary-experience!

What I did/do like about a plum, however, was/is the thin, tart skin.  Contrasted with the sweet pulp this was/is a plus.

There above lies our history: Plum and Me.

Fast forward to this season's abundance of Prune Plums and the great deals that my local Shoprite was promoting in August and early September.  Always attracted by a good deal, I was drawn to the bin of plums and noticed how small they were!  'Why bother?' I thought.  A quick search on my iPhone persuaded me to buy a few.  Read NPR's take here.

I do love a good crisp and so decided to try a scaled down recipe featuring these tiny orbs.  The results were wonderful.  I used and modified this recipe.

Notes

1.  Since I was experimenting, I halved the mentor recipe to achieve the yield stated below.  In the future, I will making the full recipe.  It is that good!

2.  I purchased 7 prune plums that weighed in just shy of 7 ounces.  Once sliced, this was enough for 1 1/2 cups.  So I added 1/2 cups of blueberries to give me 2 cups of fruit.

3.  There is no need to use ramekins.  Any oven safe dish will work.  Just make sure that it will hold the volume of ingredients you have.

4.  Oh, good news!  Prune plums don't like barnacle-clingy seeds either.  They release theirs without hassle :)

Prune Plum Crisp
Yield:  Three 6-ounce ramekins

Filling:
2 cups sliced prune plums
1 1/2 teaspoons all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
wee splash of vanilla
a pinch of cinnamon

Topping:
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup oats
1/4 cup brown sugar
wee pinch of salt, optional
2 tablespoons butter, softened

Directions

1.  Preheat oven to 350º F and butter the three ramekins.
2.  In a medium bowl, toss the prune plums (remember I had to add a few blueberries), flour, sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon together.

3.  Place a third of the fruit mix (eyeball) into each buttered ramekin.

4.  In the same bowl, combine all the topping ingredients.  Mix with a fork until crumbly.

5.  Distribute one-third of the mixture to the top of each ramekin.  Use your hands to help disperse the crumbs evenly.

6.  Bake uncovered fro 40-45 minutes or until topping is crispy-looking and golden.

Vacation Cooking

Recently we traveled to the west coast where my husband and I have a small vacation home on an island in the Puget Sound.  I have spoken about this tiny sanctuary here.  Truly a location to get away from it all, our 'little house in the woods' has been an experience of serenity, simplicity, and in one case, severity.  Let's tackle the severity issue first so we can move on...

On this latest jaunt across the country to the The San Juan Islands, we arrived at our house and immediately saw that a tree had fallen on the roof.  Aaaarrrgghhhh!  Mother Nature knows her job, and when trees are ready to lay down, she will provide the final push...no matter what might be in the way.  We are surrounded by mature trees...some upwards of 50 feet tall with trunks that I cannot completely hug, and eventually some trees will go horizontal.  But using the house to cushion the fall? No need to make sense of randomness...can't. Anyway, the roof damage was not structural, and repair is in the future.  I am grateful for this.

Okay, onward...the island has many apple trees and berry bushes in public areas.  Being here at the end of summer provided us with endless opportunity for fruit-picking.  You remember what my favorite fruit is, right? Are you thinking I was a happy camper?  No lie, we ate ourselves silly with an apple crisp early on in our stay. After a second harvesting of apples, we enjoyed applesauce as a side to a few meals.  Added up, we ate the equivalent of about eight pounds of this lovely fruit!  I will forever be here at every summer's end.

For the apple crisp, I revisited this favorite :)

And for the applesauce, I cored and peeled a couple pounds of the freshly-picked apples, placed them into a dutch oven with about a teaspoon of cinnamon (follow your own heart here) and a splash of water.  No sugar! Then I covered the pan and let it cook over low heat, checking on it every 10 minutes or so to stir or add a bit more water as it cooked down.  The result?  Awesomesauce!  Hmmm... a serendipitous coincidence that this post takes advantage of Oxford Dictionary's newest entry.

Is it any wonder that our vacation place (and apples) conjure the adjectives serene and simple?