There are two summer themes this year—gathering free fruit to make jam, and seeing how little sugar we can get away with using and still call it jam. Ok, sometimes its sauce. But I’m ok with that.

I’ve been obsessed with making low sugar jam ever since I served as a judge in the Good Food Awards last year. Turns out that spending the day tasting dozens of jams can leave a person with a terrible stomachache that lasts a couple days. After the first five jams, they all tasted the same…sweeeeet. So this year my goal is to preserve the flavor of the fruit, not the sugar.

The first bout of jamming took place on 4 of July weekend. We’d been visiting friends who live in a development alongside a trail that leads to the nearby delta and Port of Sacramento. Before the trail was built, backyards had extended out farther, so the area the trail runs through is lined with feral fruit trees of all sorts. Plum season!

Yellow plums, green plums, red plums. All kinds of plums were ripe and plopping off the trees all around us. Five of us filled bags and bags of them and, since nobody else wanted them, we took them home to make jam. Mixed plum jam. We used about 1 1/2 cups sugar for every four cups of cut fruit. Considering most recipes call for equal parts sugar and fruit, that’s low. The jam was tart. Almost too tart. Since low sugar jam is more perishable, we processed it for 15 minutes in the jars.

Bout two of jamming crossed state lines. We timed our camping trip up north to coincide with Oregon blackberry season. After camping in the woods for two days, and picking blackberries for two hours, we were ready for a little indoor time. A rented apartment in Ashland, a few showers and nice dinners out, a Shakespeare play, and an afternoon reading and making blackberry jam…and before we knew it we were headed home with not quite enough jars of Oregon summer.

This time, we upped the sugar ratio to account for the blackberries being somewhat under ripe.  We used two cups sugar for every four cups of blackberries. And it’s almost too sweet.

What’s next? Figs? Show me the tree!

If you’re a person who reads cookbooks as much for stories as recipes, and aspires to an elegantly rural, abundant lifestyle, then Plum Gorgeous by Romney (Nani) Steele will speak to you. If you swoon over gorgeous photos of seasonal fruits set in dreamy tableaux, Plum Gorgeous, with photos by Sara Remington, will send you off into a never-never land of wistful longing.

Steele’s first book, My Nepenthe, a memoir about growing up in the legendary Big Sur restaurant, was a personal account of the author’s relationships with her family and the history of a legendary place. Plum Gorgeous is loosely about Steele’s time living in a mountaintop orchard, but is more meditation than memoir, presenting snippets of observations and memories amidst fragments of poetry and quotations by writers as diverse as Rilke, Mas Masumoto, and Chekov—all interspersed with practical information about different fruit varieties and how to cook with them.

The recipes are from the off-the-cuff, cook-with-what’s-on-hand school of cooking—the type of cooking you imagine happens on a farm or in an orchard, far from the nearest grocery store. The type of cooking that often happens in my own kitchen. I like that I can take an idea from this book and run with it, using what I have on hand, adding my own twist of inspiration, adapting at will.

I was looking for a gluten free seasonal dessert that I could whip up quickly on a weeknight. I chose the cherry clafoutis in Plum Gorgeous. I’m no expert on gluten free baking, so I theorized that a dessert with such a small amount of flour would be a good candidate for a straight up gluten free flour substitution. I subbed rice flour for wheat flour, which worked just fine. I didn’t have any of the called for crème fraîche, so I used sour cream instead. I didn’t measure anything, just eyeballed it all in the midst of preparing supper. I used a hand blender instead of a blender-blender to mix the batter and then I skipped the step where I was supposed to strain it.

Out of sheer laziness and in a rush, I put the raw almonds on top about halfway through cooking instead of toasting them separately. The indignities I inflicted on this recipe should have come back to bite me, but they didn’t. The crepe-like clafoutis batter rose up like a Dutch Baby, encasing the sugared and liquored up cherries in a puffy embrace. The top browned, as it should; the almonds became crisp. I scooped it from the skillet steaming, eggy, and fragrant. It was a hit. I should always be so lucky with my haphazard baking habits.

my cherry clafoutis

cherry clafoutis from the book

The book is filled with similar seasonal fruit recipes that are forgiving, flexible, and uncomplicated. Come for the memoir and stay for recipes like Plum Soup with Basil Ice Cream; Heirloom Tomatoes and Peaches with Burrata; and Kumquats and Toasted Couscous with Halloumi. Or come for the recipes and be drawn into the memoir and photos.

As for the photos, Steele and Remington worked in collaboration on them, and it shows. Steele is a gifted food stylist (she styled the food in DIY Delicious, which the super talented Remington also shot) and together, these two women know how to make a book a work of art.

The entire experience was amazing. The school has a unique method of teaching grammar in a cultural, political, and social context. The teachers are engaging and super smart. The family I lived with was warm and kind and Dona Mari welcomed me into her kitchen with open arms, let me help her and take photos and answered so many questions. She said she doesn't like to cook, but I don't believe her because it's not possible to make such wonderful food for a perfect stranger unless you like doing it.

The home was comfortable and the people in the city of Cuernavaca are inviting and helpful. Cuernavaca also has a wonderful market that is large, lively, and full of delicious things to eat. I think I'll go back. I have family and friends in Mexico now. So much better than being a tourist!

Here's the first installment of photos and captions. Enjoy!

A typical cena (around 3-4pm) after school. Soup, nopale salad, salsa, agua de jamaica, freshly made tortillas, some kind of meat (not pictured).

Freshly made gorditas in the market. Stuffed with beans, freshly fried and then topped with fiery green salsa, crema and delicious cheese. Craving these now!

Prepping the fruit for the punche, a fruit cocktail/punch to enjoy with the traditional New Years Eve Posole.

The punche on the stove cooking. Many fruits as well as fresh sugar cane and tamarind.

Tacos dorados to serve with the posole. Half are stuffed with potatoes and green chile and the other half with requeson (a type of cheese).

Here is the New Years meal. Posole blanco, (traditional accompaniments oregano, lime, chile, avocado) punche, tacos dorados, enjoyed at 11pm before fireworks. 

These are the fireworks. It's a structure with a bull in front carried by a runner. Fireworks fly off in every crazy direction and the people in the streets run with the bulls. It's nuts.

Another market photo

A really cool prehispanic cooking vessel in the excellent museum at the ruins at Xochicalco, an important site outside of Cuernavaca.

Gorgeous banana blossom on the tree at the school.

That's it for now. Look for another installment of Markets and Comida in Cuernavaca soon!

Blackened organic persimmons for 75 cents a pound vs. around $3 a pound?

Sign me up because I’m making persimmon butter. Bought these from Kaki at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market. They told me the alarming-looking sooty skin wouldn’t affect the fruit and they were right.

This and the galette I’m using it for are the last two recipes for the book. I really wanted both recipes in the book so I’m thankful that Chronicle let me go past deadline until the persimmons came into season. I wavered between using Hachiyas or Fuyus. Fuyus are more readily available and I figured they would behave like apples when turned into butter. Whereas the Hachiyas are lovely to bake into puddings and cakes as long as they are gooey ripe, they can be very tannic when cooked on the stove. I’ve heard that if you freeze them first, that takes care of the problem.

I was also going for an interesting flavor profile so I settled on cinnamon, cardamom, rum, vanilla beans, and lime. Wow. It’s really good. Visions of holiday gifts are now dancing in my head.

Here’s the method:
Peel and cut the fruit into chunks and put it in the food processor. I used about 2 1/2 pounds of persimmons.

Process until smooth and then put it through a potato ricer or food mill if you have one. If you don’t, it won’t make that much difference.

Put the pulp in a heavy enameled cast iron pot and add 2/3 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons maple syrup, a whole cinnamon stick, a whole vanilla bean, split and scraped, and the crushed seeds from one cardamom pod. Cook it down over low heat for at least an hour until it darkens and thickens, stirring occasionally and watching carefully so it doesn’t stick and burn.

Add two tablespoons of white rum and continue to cook for 10 minutes. Add the zest of one lime grated on a microplane. Stir and taste. Cool and refrigerate. I used about 2 1/2 pounds of persimmons and it yielded about 2 cups of persimmon butter.

For the galette, I used about 3/4 of a cup of persimmon butter. I simply spread it on thinly leaving a border and then laid the apples out on top. The dough for the galette was my usual dough from this recipe but instead of all butter, I used 4 tablespoons leaf lard bought from Prather and 3 tablespoons butter. That turned out to be a very good decision. I brushed the apples and crust with a little butter halfway through baking.

This was served in the Headlands kitchen to Eduardo, his baking assistant Megan, and a few people who wandered in. It was a hit.

The rest of the butter is being eaten on toast. Yesterday, I spread a little on a piece of whole wheat toast and added thin slices of gruyere. What a sublime afternoon snack!

Last week it was brutally hot around here and all I could think about was the Mexican corn I had at the Eat Real Festival. See my post about the festival on EcoSalon.

I had some corn in the fridge that needed eating so I went out shopping for more food and inspiration. I walked into the fish store at Market Hall in Rockridge and I immediately thought, “Ceviché!” And there you have it: Mexican corn and ceviche on a hot night. Perfection.

For the Corn:
Boil, grill, or steam it. (I steamed because it was too hot to boil water and it’s both energy efficient and water saving, and I’d never light the grill just for corn)

Slather with thick, plain, Greek yogurt (for all those people that are freaked out by mayonnaise) Sprinkle with Mexican oregano, Aleppo pepper, and Parmesan cheese.

For the Ceviché:
3/4 pound halibut (I used two sea scallops for part of it, but you could use all halibut) cut into bite-sized pieces
Juice of 3 limes
Chopped cilantro to taste
One-half of an avocado, in bite-sized pieces
1 firm, tart plum, sliced thinly into wedges
One-half of a large jalapeno (or a whole small one) quartered, seeded, and diced
1 small shallot, sliced thinly
Salt
Pepper
Aleppo pepper to taste

Combine all the ingredients and refrigerate for about 45 minutes before serving.

Plums? you say? I don’t know where the plum idea came from. It just popped into my head. Too much Top Chef? Anyway, it worked, playing the same role as tomato would in ceviché. I freshly fried corn tortillas before serving and I’m telling you it was good. I have no idea why I don’t make ceviché more often.

For the Aleppo pepper in both recipes, you could substitute cayenne (be careful because it’s usually hotter) or some other mild, ground chile. I just really love Aleppo for its heat level and slight fruitiness.

I love plums. I really do. Sometimes I have a hard time doing anything with them other than just popping them in my mouth. With the last gasp of summer stone fruit upon us it’s time to do a little simple baking. I’m not much of a baker really, and I prefer uncomplicated fruit desserts. This is my go-to dessert all summer long. When I’m asked to bring a dessert to an event, this is it. I’ll use peaches, apricots, plums, cherries, nectarines, or even a combination.

The cornmeal crust is easy to work with and holds up well to the juicy fruit. It also adds a nice crunch to the final product. Try it with apples or pears in a few weeks. Though I’d add some sweet spices to the fruit. The secret to a flaky crust is to keep the ingredients as cold as possible and don’t over mix the dough.

3 tablespoons yogurt
1/3 cup ice water
1 cup flour
1/4 cup cornmeal
1 teaspoon sugar, plus about 1 tablespoon additional for sprinkling on top
1/2 teaspoon salt
7 Tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces and chilled
About 2 large peaches or nectarines, or 4 to 5 plums, or many cherries, or a mixture (pitted and sliced)

Stir together yogurt and water and keep in the freezer while you mix the other ingredients.

Mix together flour, cornmeal, sugar, and salt. Add butter and work in quickly with a pastry blender, leaving some pieces of butter the size of small peas.

Sprinkle the ice water/yogurt mixture over the flour-butter mixture gradually, mixing it in with a fork. Be careful not to over mix. The dough can still be crumbly, but should stick together when pinched. You may not need to use all the yogurt-water mixture.

Gather the dough into a ball, wrap and refrigerate for two hours.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. F.

Roll out dough to a quarter inch thickness and transfer to a baking sheet. Top the dough with sliced fruit, working in a spiral from the inside out, leaving a border of about 2 inches all along the edge of the dough. Fold the edges of the dough inward to encase the fruit, and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake at 400 degrees until the crust is brown and flaky and the fruit soft, bubbling and fragrant, about 15 to 20 minutes.