Skip to main content

Plum Paste








I got the plums from Arfi, when I went to her house for an Auckland food bloggers get-together.
Wash the plums and place them in a large saucepan with a little water. Bring the fruit to a gentle boil.



Simmer the jam for about 20 minutes and then pass through a sieve, discarding the stones.
Put back into the pot and bring back to the boil. Add the sugar (I used 60% sugar to the weight of the fruit) and stir well. Simmer until you are happy with the consistency (the more you cook it, the thicker the paste. You can also add an apple (not peeled, just chopped and pips removed) for a thicker paste.





Place the paste into plastic containers, jelly moulds, cups... anywhere you can let it set for a few weeks. I used a silicon muffin tray.







When you need to use the paste tip it over a plate. I did this a bit too early (I couldn't wait to try it) and the top was still soft, but the longer you wait the harder it will become.








Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Comments

  1. Un meraviglia sensioriale al palato...le prugne nel ramo sono bellissimi...buon we, ciao.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Is this basically a kind of jam, or is it eaten on its own? Looks quite delicious...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thats sooo delicious,simply irresistible..

    ReplyDelete
  4. Plum paste looks awesome delicious. Nice to make some cake with them.

    ReplyDelete
  5. @ Laura, like jam but thicker, usually plum paste is eaten with cheese, but yes, as Swathi says, you can make cakes with it :-).

    ReplyDelete
  6. interessante questa ricettina, complimenti!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to make Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum), and Sweet New Zealand

Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum) Before I start I would like to say that I don't have a sugar thermometer, essential if you are really into confectionery, and that I didn't use much sugar for these Turkish delights. Many recipes use much more sugar, and it is not that I wanted to make a low sugar treat here (it is still pretty sweet), it is just that making it at home really makes me realize how much sugar there is already in my diet, and if I can have something with a little less... well, why not! This method is 'home friendly' i.e. these can be made at home with very little effort and equipment, and the recipe comes from my book  Sweet As...  where I also have the recipe for lavender and orange blossom Turkish Delights. Ingredients 1 l water 300 g sugar 2 tbsp lemon juice 100 g cornflour 1 tbsp frozen raspberries 1 tbsp rose water icing sugar (very little) and cornflour (lots) to dust. In a pot put hal

Home Made Marzipan Sweets

This is another recipe from my book Sweet As , and something that I love to make for Xmas. I would like to say that for marzipan you should get the best almonds around, natural, but here in New Zealand the almonds taste different from the ones in Italy. They are imported, not sure where from most of the time, but they are not top grade almonds. Still, with a few tips, you can make your marzipan taste great even with 'regular' almonds! Buy them natural, not blanched, you need to blanche then yourself or the result will be too dry. To blanch them you need to put them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, and then add cold water and take the skin off, one by one. For this recipe you will need: 200 g almonds 100 g icing sugar 5 apricot kernels. As I was saying before, the almond here have little taste, so I like to collect the stones from apricot and get the almonds out. They are a real pain to crack! In the photo above you can see apricot stones and kernels. The apricot kernel

Silver beet Paneer, a variation of Palak Paneer

The other day I showed you my curry made with borage , ‘invented’ because I have tons of it in the garden! The other green-leaf crop that does well in Auckland is silver beet. My old plants (from last year!) got so tall that I started collecting only the little leaves from the stalks, and they look like spinach. One of my favourite Indian dishes is Palak Paneer (or Panir), spinach with panir cottage cheese, and this variation is made using my silver beet. I washed (many times!) the small silver beet leaves, and then I steamed them and drain them. In a heavy pot I heated 2 tbsp of vegetable oil (I used rice bran oil) and sautéed for 30 seconds: 1/2 tsp ground cumin 1/2 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp turmeric 1/3 tsp ground chili then I added 2 roughly chopped shallots and, after 3 minutes, a good pinch of salt and the cooked silver beet. I cooked everything on low for about 20 minutes (you may need to add just a little water if the silver beet is too dry) and then finely pureed the content