Plum Season ... Yummi!

I just saw a blog post passing by from another blogger about blueberry picking and it inspired me to write about plums :-)

Living in an area that produces nothing but fruits, we have moved from the season of cherries to the season of plums (blackberries, apples and pears still to follow). And I just LOVE plums. Red/purple-ones are my favorites and you can buy them along the road directly from farms (just a table with bags of plums and a little tin in which you can drop money). Nearby someone is selling them at 1.50 euros per kilo. So far I bought 4 kgs ...

But ... there is also a plum tree just outside my house. It is technically on the property of the school I am living across from but ... as the school has closed for summer vacation it would be a bit sad to let the yellow/greenish plums go to waste, right?

So when I passed by the tree two days ago, my downstairs neighbors were sitting on their balcony and I suggested it was time to get some plums from the tree. So my neighbor came down and together we got as many ripe plums from the tree as we could get. It is a very high tree, so even for me standing on a high ladder - unfortunately, no pictures were taken - I had to do some acrobatics to get to the plums and pick them. We ended up with about 5 kgs. We shared them with different neighbors but I was still left with about 1.5kgs so ... time to make some plum crumble!!

I learned how to make an apple crumble about 20 years ago, when I was an au-pair in France (yes, 20 years ago sounds like a REALLY long time ... it actually is ...). I think the recipe originates from Britain but it seems the French love to make these types of pies. It is super-easy and quick. So here is the recipe (you can make it will all types of fruits, by the way: apples, pears, plums, raspberries, strawberries, or combinations of fruits)

Butter an oven dish. Wash, dry, and cut the plums/apples (1-1.5 kg) into halfs and quarts or pieces (just to fit it a bit better). Put the cut fruits into the dish. Cover the fruits with crumbles. Put in the oven, bake at about 425 degrees Fahrenheit/200 degrees Celcius for about 25-30 minutes. Done!! Just scoop it, when still warm, out of the oven dish on plates and enjoy!!

Ok, fair point, it is not THAT easy as you still have to make the crumbles. Here is how to do that. Take a bowl and put 150 grams (5 ounces) of room-temperature butter, 150 grams of flour and 150 grams of (cane)sugar. Then do the opposite of  kneading the dough ... crumble it! If the crumbles are too big (because still too much butter) just add more sugar and flour in equal quantities until you have crumbles as below.

Mine just came out of the oven so when my family comes tomorrow to take part in the first birthday celebrations this year, they will have some illegally-picked-from-the-school-yard-yellow-green-plum-crumble!

Try it out this weekend and enjoy!!

Rose