Cherry Plum Ketchup

Here's the recipe from my plum ketchup experiment the other day. It's not quite got the HP sauce taste I was aiming for, maybe due to the lack of dried fruit compared to the Cherry Plum Chutney recipe, but it is a lovely, tangy, tingly on the tongue sauce and such a beautiful colour too.

Norfolk Kitchen Cherry Plum Ketchup.

2 kilos cherry plums

2 onions chopped

440ml vinegar (any kind except malt)

320g sugar

30g ground ginger

1tsp cayenne pepper

2oz salt

Generous pinch mixed spice

Stone the plums, add them to a pan with all the other ingredients. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 40 minutes until the mixture is thick and jammy. Briefly blend everything together (I used a stick blender) then push through a sieve into a clean pan. Taste and adjust seasoning if needed. Makes approx 2 litres.

I'm not sure how long this will keep though I suspect it's not long as it's fairly light on the vinegar and sugar. To get around this I've got one bottle in the fridge and have put the excess into plastic bottles and stored them in the freezer.

The main advantage of home made ketchups versus shop bought, in my opinion, is their natural non-plasticy taste which gives them greater versatility. They're perfectly acceptable poured over most things I would never introduce to Heinz, like Pizza, omlettes or cheese on toast.

Right then, next on the experiment list: Yellow Bullace and ginger cordial.

The 2011 Foraging Season kicks off.

One advantage of the children getting a little older is that they can be put to work in the foraging season - here's Xanthe hard at it in the kitchen.

On Saturday we went out on our annual cherry plum harvest, I know everyone else seems to have been picking them for weeks already, but our usual spot is in the shady side of a very tall hedge and they seem to ripen later. For a change it was a gloriously sunny day (most previous trips to this location have involved wellies and pack a macs), the children decided to scamper off into the 'hedge' which is actually a narrow strip of woodland running along the back of the Diss Rugby club ground, but Adam summoned them back to pull their weight in the fruit harvest.

We've refined our technique after last year's marathon bullace harvest and went for a 'shake the tree' method rather than the 'selective use of the apple picker' method. Adam extended the apple picker to it's full length, wedged it onto a branch and shook like mad. The resulting monsoon of cherry plums and yellow bullace sent the girls into shrieking paroxms of delight - at least until Xanthe was hit squarely in the eye by a large cherry plum. After that we stood well back while the fruit bounced down on Adam's head.

Once the road was carpeted with fruit, the children were required to help, we all rushed around around frantically picking them up before any cars came along. It's a teeny tiny single track country road so cars aren't frequent, I think we only saw 3, but they do seem to come along just at the wrong moment and squash the maximum number of plums. We also had our annual "yes you can eat them" conversation with passing walkers who never seem quite convinced and refuse our offers to try one.

Yesterday I made our household favourite, Cherry Plum Cordial (made 4 bottles, one half used already) and today I'm going to try and amalgamate my Cherry Plum Chutney recipe with myPlum Ketchup recipe which should be an interesting experiment. I'm hoping it turns out a bit like HP sauce.

We picked 3 kilos of cherry plums and 4 of yellow bullace but I don't think it's enough! We're on holiday next week but I'm hoping to pick some more at the weekend and stash them in the freezer for processing when we get home.

Spot the Difference?

Pop Quiz - what have I picked?? On the left are some damsons I picked a few days ago, they're very ripe and sweet and a deep purple colour. At the bottom are a few purple bullace I picked. They look almost identical but the taste couldn't be more different. It's beyond sharp, I would defy anyone to taste these without a major physical reaction including face scrunching, foot stamping and immediate demands for water as they seem to leech every drop of moisture from your mouth.

The fruit on the top right now look the same as the others but when I saw them on the hedge they were bright blue, covered in a pale blue bloom which makes them look like giant sloes. When tasted they were sharper than the first damsons I picked but not in the same league as the bullace so they're obviously just slightly less ripe than the first batch.

Now, shall I throw sloes into the confusion? Some purple bullace are quite small and very easily confused with sloes (see the excellent sloe.biz site for a more detailed discussion) but there is a foolproof way to tell the difference. Sloes grow on the Blackthorn tree, the clue's in the name, if you can pick them without getting scratched they're bullace, if your flesh is ripped to shreds on vicious thorns, they're sloes.

It can be really tricky to identify wild plums as many of them are inter-related. According to Richard Mabey's seminal work 'Food for Free' damsons were bred from bullace so the two fruits can be indistinguishable. While I'm on the subject of Richard Mabey, he lives near Diss, I saw him in our Morrisons once. Felt inexplicably cheated, shouldn't he be out foraging ducks off the Waveney or something? His book also ignores Cherry plums and yellow bullace (far sweeter than the purple kind) and I really don't know why.

To muddy the waters further, there are cultivated varieties of plums which escape from gardens. I know where a wild plum tree grows whose fruit is delicious but I haven't got a clue what type they are. They're larger than damsons but don't have their characteristic blue bloom and aren't as large as something like a Victoria plum so goodness knows what they are.

Which begs the ultimate question - if they taste good, does it matter?

Edit - I'm just updating this post with a couple of extra pointers in distinguishing sloes and purples bullace. I'm noticing bullace are ripening much earlier than sloes, I'm writing this edit at the beginning of September and bullace are dropping from the trees and even beginning to wither already. Sloes traditionally aren't ripe til after the first frost.

Also, I've noticed insects burrowing into bullace whereas this doesn't really happen with sloes as they're not sweet enough. Tell tale signs of maggots include crystalised drops of juice (if you look closely enough you'll see it comes from a tiny hole) and little piles of tiny brown grains (maggot poo - ugh) on the outside of the fruit.

Top Foraging Day.

We're loving the cherry plums so much we couldn't resist going out and picking another haul before our holiday on Saturday. Adam's off work so he came too and the four of us trundled off to a new hedgerow I'd spotted when out running the other day. The only problem was the plums were growing really high up as the hedge is regularly trimmed to a height of about 6' to maintain visibility for passing traffic. Luckily we had brought one of these (mine was much cheaper) known to us by it's technical name 'the grabby thing'. So Adam poked around with it, showered us with earwigs, and managed to successfully dislodge the plums in the upper reaches of the branches.

We hadn't been there long when the heavens opened, luckily we'd all brought waterproofs and the kids were in their wellies so they occupied themselves with puddle jumping while Adam and I toiled. We piqued the interest of a herd of cows in the next field who ambled over and lined up along the hedge to watch us in bemusement.

We got a satisfyingly bulgy bag of cherry plums and then spotted a yellow bullace a bit further along. In total I think we've got another 5 kilos of fruit. As much as I love foraging, it is a bit depressing as the resulting glut of fruit dwarfs the puny harvest from my veg garden. The handful of tumbling toms sitting in the fridge I was so proud of this morning is looking rather paltry now! Roll on allotment time.

I Spy Plum Pie!

The much vaunted Plum Pie finally came to life at tea time today. In the end it was a bit of a damp squib to be honest, but then no plum pie could live up to the expectations of a 2 year old waiting for her favourite story book to be brought to life.

After reading Each Peach Pear Plum to Xanthe last night she asked if we could have plum pie today (for those who don't know the book finishes with a host of nursery rhyme characters eating plum pie in the sun) but when I presented her with the finished article, she promptly burst into tears and refused to even try it!

I used a recipe I got from the net which, unfortunately, just didn't work. The recipe was essentially a pastry crust filled with fruit and baked custard. The quantities given wouldn't fit into the specified size of baking tin which meant the proportions of fruit to custard were wrong. I have a jug full of leftover raw custard sitting in the fridge and the large quantity of fruit in the pie crust meant too much juice came out, leaving the pastry soggy. Still, a generous splodge of cream and it was fine, as ever, the plums themselves were delicious. If I made it a second time the quantities could easily be amended and the pie hugely improved.

Ho hum, onward and upward, plum and ginger chutney next!

Plum Job

Another lovely day today. We took a picnic to Wortham Ling, I made a salad from the garden (lollo rosso, pea shoots, radishes, tomatoes and carrot) along with Nice Ham, Nice Cheese and Nice Bread. Wild apples and plums grow on the Ling which frequently add to our picnics there but they're not ready to eat just yet. Once we'd eaten we went for a walk with the intention of spotting new foraging grounds. We had mixed results. I found a damson shrub, damsons are really common and I'm told they're easy to find but I've not actually come across any as yet so I was delighted to finally find one. The delight was short lived though as it was extraordinarily low in fruit, I'd guess there were only about 20 damsons on the whole shrub, goodness knows why but a bit of a shame nonetheless.

I also thought I found a service tree and some puffball mushrooms but I was wrong on both counts so it's a good job we didn't pick any!

The big success of the day were the cherry plums I spotted on Thursday. Adam was duly dispatched this afternoon to pick some. He came home triumphant with, I'd guess, about 3 or 4 kilos of fruit. This is the first time we've picked cherry plums and I'm hugely impressed with them. First thing I noticed was the smell, sweet and honeyed like peaches or apricots, divine. They're sweet enough to eat as they are which is unusual for a wild plum and makes me wonder whether they're a cross breed or garden escapee. If anyone has any experience of cherry plums I'd be interested to hear how sweet you found them.

Next thing is figuring out what to do with them! Plum Cordial for Willow is on the cards, probably jam, maybe chutney. I'm pondering the possibility of preserving some in alcohol, this method is recommended for fruit like peaches and apricots so I imagine it would work with cherry plums too. Whatever I decide I'll post the recipe, can't wait to get experimenting!