Foraged Plums

Ed came home a few days ago with an ice cream container full of plums he had foraged from a tree at our church.  They sat on the bench for a few days while I tried to decide what to do with them.  I decided that I'd like to try making some plum sauce.  My Grandad has a plum tree at his house that produces heaps of juicy plums every year, and he used to make an amazing plum sauce.  

Unfortunately, it turned out that making plum sauce was going to be pretty much impossible without going to the supermarket!  I needed a few extra ingredients, and so set off around Dunedin to find them.  After visiting three different asian grocers, I finally managed to find some whole allspice.  However white-wine vinegar was nowhere to be found.  The shop owner at the Indian Food Market told me that he can't stock products like vinegar because the supermarkets buy goods at such a cheap bulk price that he simply can't compete.  He is actually considering stocking some products like vinegar and making no profit, so that he can make his customers happy.  Another asian grocer had an extraordinary range of cooking liquids including "tuna extract" and "brown cooking sauce", but no white-wine vinegar.  The organics shop might have had it, but it was now after closing time on Sunday.  So it seemed that my plum sauce was not going to happen.

This is where the "supermarket-free" month becomes a bit ridiculous - as fun as it is to try making things myself, it becomes awfully complicated when I can't actually get the ingredients to make them!!

I decided to settle on making jam instead.  We've traded a few jars of my apricot jam (thanks Rory for the oranges and neighbours for the apples!) and given some away, so I needed to restock our supply.  The plums were yellow-fleshed, and I wasn't sure if they would turn out a nice red colour like plum jam usually does, but it seems that the red colouring in the skin is enough to do that.  The jam is very tasty, and quite tart which I like.

I stoned the fruit before I cooked it, as I didn't want to risk leaving stones in the jam by mistake.

Plum Jam

1.5 kg plums, washed

400ml water

1.5 kg sugar

Remove any stalks and place the plums and water in a deep saucepan. Stew slowly until the fruit has broken down – about 20 minutes. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved, then return the jam to the boil. As the stones rise to the surface, remove them to a sieve suspended over the saucepan. This will allow any liquid to drip back into the jam. Cook for about 10 minutes to reach the setting point, then skim and pour the jam into warm, dry jars. Cover.

Makes 2.5 litres.