What to do with an embarrassment of Shiro plums? Some of you may have been here in the summertime when we experienced an abundance of Shiro plums and witnessed Chef Kären mutter something about “An embarrassment of Plums”. Here at Quillisascut we have been pondering this question for several years. One of our summertime quests!
Shiro Plums when ripe are a sweet, cheery sunny yellow. We have made plum jam, spicy plum sauce, and Japanese style umeboshi plums. Sometimes we have them on the table at every meal asking every one to have their daily ration of sweet yellow fruit.
Rick has taken to thinning some of the fruit from the tree so the remaining plums will get larger. Offering us an embarrassment of little under ripe green plums. The goats do like them fresh out of hand.
Then I remembered reading about mock olives made from plums and thought I would do a little research and see if I could find a recipe or two.
In my search I found they are a favored snack in the Middle East. They eat them out of hand, fresh and crunchy with a dash of salt. They are refreshing on a hot summer day.
I came across a pickle recipe that claimed “these taste just like green olives”. Hot vinegar is poured over the plums, add a few spices and let them set. The second day you drain off the vinegar brine, reheat it to boiling, let it cool a little then pour back over the plums. So far they don’t taste like olives to me, but maybe in a month they will?
Some of the Middle Eastern recipes called for covering the plums with a salt water brine. I decided to try a lacto-fermented version that are still fermenting so I don’t have the taste results, but as you can see in the picture, they look beautiful. And they will offer up wonderful probiotic benefits.
You can bet they will show up with our cheese samplers when guests arrive this summer!
I’m curious as to how these turned out?
I had some green plums that fell off the tree and vaguely recalled they could be pickled. I scoured the web for scant recipes and settled with scoring them and brining them. What I forgot to do is put them in the fridge as the recipes stated! A week or two later, I guess they have lacto-fermented. I just ate one and the first thing I said is “they taste a lot like green olives”. But crisper and not oily.
I haven’t fermented fruit/veg before. There are cloudy sworls in the liquid that readily mix in to make the whole liquid a bit cloudy. Is that a worry? There is no surface mould or off odours.
Yours are probably fine, there is usually a cloudy residue with pickles from the yeast in the ferment. Keep the refrigerated.