[Blue Peter]

Having seen all these posts about foraging, I've just collected a few of these (they seem to use them quite frequently on the amenity land in MK), but just to be sure, they look a bit like cherries, but are slightly larger and don't come in the cherry-like bunches? Oh and the leaves are rather more like large version of sloe leaves?


Peter.

[cab]

Get a whole load of plums. Weigh a big pan, put the plums in it, and weigh it again. You need these two numbers.

Add a little water to the plums, and stew 'em down to a pulp. Let it cool, and weigh the pan and plums again; add water to bring the pulp back to the original weight of the plums an pan together.

Now, rub the plum pulp through a colander, and keep rubbing it till you get the pulp all through. Take the stones and tie them in a bag of muslin, and put that back in (this is optional, helps, but you don't need it).

Add sugar equal to the weight of plums you started with, a knob of butter (stops scum forming) and boil the jam mix till it reaches setting point (104C, or normal testing on the back of a spoon) and then get it off the heat and bottled as for any other jam. I like this one rather runny, so that by warming some through with some soy sauce, rice vinegar and rice wine you've got a fantastic plum sauce, or you can just use it as jam. Good glaze in duck or ham too.

Some jams I make in big bulk and use up over two years (e.g. raspberry), some are delicate so they lose flavour and I make them every year (strawberry, apricot and elderflower), but cherry plum is robust and very, very useful, so I make a whole lot of it every single year.

[cab]

Pretty things, aren't they? Wonder if its a gague. There are certainly some of those around in Cambridge.

[cab]

I must confess to finding the nomenclature of plums confusing. If memory serves, named mirabelle varieties are either Prunus xdomestica or cultivars of Prunus insititia, depending on who you ask, whereas the cherry plum is Prunus cerasifera. But thats only half the battle, as P. domestica is a generic term for crosses that includes most of the domestic bred plums other than the ones NOT in domestica, which are P. cerasifera... And damsons (which aren't like mirabelles really) sit in P. insititia too!

Sometimes I want to find whoever invented plum nomenclature and strangle him

Suffice to say that for my own part, I call the small juicy ones with the flesh clinging (at least a little) to the stones cherry plums, unless they're obviously damsons, in which case they're damsons. I call the later ripening, harder ones bullace. If the fruit is more free of the stones, often being larger fruit, I call them plums. I totally accept that the nomenclature I used may be all wrong!

[cab]

Gague probably means gage, I simply can't spell the word

Incidentally, have a look at Cambridge market, tons of different varieties of plums grown locally there, even more that are British. Everything from early rivers through cherry plums to victorias, its wonderful to see.

[wildfoodie]

sort of, yes but verypasty /floury texture. They've gone into the pot for jam, I'll let you know how it goes. Personally theyre not juicy enough to count as an eating plum for me.

[tahir]

Cruelty to children, moi?

I was holding the kuddoo in front of her head while the missus took the pic