Plum crazy!
Three juicy desserts make late-season stone-fruit.
Happy Friday, crazy cook!
OK, maybe I’m projecting. Maybe I’m the one who’s plum crazy. Happens to me around this time every year. I warm up with the early season plums, but at that point in the summer they’re competing with peaches and nectarines. Now plums are kind of eclipsing their stone fruit brethren.
Where I live, in Dallas, Texas, finding good plums is a crap shoot. Of course my home state is plum paradise — and Santa Rosa plums, to a native Californian, are the holy grail. Normally this late in the summer, they’re long gone.
But look what I lucked upon last weekend when I visited my friends Mikie and Dan in San Luis Obispo: late-season Santa Rosas!
We also found the small, oval plums they call quetsches in France, at the same farmstand (See Canyon) that had the Santa Rosas. The quetsches are similar to Italian plums, but if I’m not mistaken, Italian plums are more purple. One of the farmers suggested we choose the ones that felt like “blubber” — I loved that.