Stewed Drupes

I wanted to call this post "Plum Jam" but that is not really what I ended up with. So I am going with the much catchier title, Stewed Drupes.

We had a pint of plums from Trader Joes that had been sitting on the counter for two weeks and were still as hard as cannon balls (I guess it's because I didn't put them in the fruit bowl as they recommend. My bad, because obviously they would have ripened magically in those radically different conditions).


I considered roasting them with sugar, butter, and cinnamon, but when I took a bite of one, the flesh was so hard and, quite frankly, tasteless, that roasting did not seem a sufficient measure to coax some flavor and pleasing texture out of them.

Instead, I chopped them up into small pieces (8 plums in all), put them in a pot, added 3 cups of water, 1/2 cup of sugar, and embarked on an evening of making jam.


This is when they had already been stewing for a while - the flesh was originally very pale. The rich jewel color comes from the skins.



I brought the mixture to a boil and then simmered it for two hours. This is the right thing to do if you are watching television and you do not want the sugary mixture to burn or boil over (making a horrible mess and / or catching fire) as you can only pop into the kitchen during commercial breaks.

This is the wrong thing to do if you want jam.

In order for the boiled fruit to become jam, the fruit has to boil at a high temperature for long enough to release the fruit's natural pectin (I only looked this up after the fact). The pectin changes the consistency of the fruit from runny to gelatinous, which you can determine by spooning a small amount onto a plate (necessary because everything is runny at high temperatures, including fully-set jellies and jams). If the spoonful of fruit runs everywhere, all you have is stewed fruit. If it blobs into a discernible shape, you've got jam, baby.

I had stewed fruit. Jam it isn't, but it's pretty, no? That's my favorite color in the world.



You can serve the stewed drupes with ice cream, a la the Barefoot Contessa (and her recipe doesn't take two hours). Spread it on toast, scones, or between layers of a cake. Dollop onto freshly-made rice pudding. Or my personal fave - mix it in with yogurt topped with fresh granola and nuts.

Besides the consistency, the other distinction between jam and stewed fruit is it doesn't last forever. I took the "preserve" out of "preserves." No matter. It's too sweet and delicious to last long.