Satsuma plum cubes pickled in Muscat
Background
About making dehydrated Satsuma plum cubes from a bountiful crop so that they can be pickled in Muscat and stored for future use in cooking.
Satsuma plum trees often have branch-breaking crops and produce more plums than can be used during the season. Early in the fruiting season, they can be eaten as tasty but tart-flavoured fruit to take some of the load off the poor tree. These firm fruits can be easily dried in a dehydrator to store them for later use in desserts such as my ski chalet plum pudding.
I started by removing the stone and making plum halves. These dried slowly and unevenly, so I dried them as quarters. Some pieces were over-dried and became unattractively hard, while others were under-dried and risked going mouldy when stored.
My response to this problem was to pickle the plum quarters in cheap but delightfully fruity Muskat (or Port) with some raw sugar in a sealed container. This softens the hard pieces whilst drying out the excessively moist pieces. “The alcohol vapour, in the closed container, rapidly equilibrates the moisture content over the whole batch. It also deactivates any mould spores on the outside of them.” The sugar sweetens these Satsuma plums that were picked before fully ripening.
I cut these pickled plums into smaller pieces to use in my cooking and no longer use them in my trail scroggin. Instead, I use Satsuma plum (leather) squares for the trail scroggin. These are much more popular with my walking and skiing companions.
Making Satsuma pickled plum cubes for cooking
Consequently, my dehydration of plums evolved into making small plum cubes. These small cubes dry or over-dry easily and benefit from the softening and sweetening by the pickling process, and they keep forever, and are ready for immediate use in cooking without further preparation.
I cut the plums in half and remove the stone. Then I put the cut face down on the cutting board and slice it into cubes and spread the cubes, as a single layer, on the Teflon sheet on the dehydrator trays. The drying at 75C is very quick and uniform, but too dry for pleasant eating.
Next, I put the dried plum pieces in a plastic bucket with a tight-fitting lid and immediately add some raw sugar and enough Muscat to easily coat all the pieces. I seal the lid, and for the first two weeks, I periodically roll and tumble the bucket to spread the alcohol over all the pieces. Eventually, the natural vapour movement in the bucket will evenly distribute the alcohol, sugar and moisture between all pieces without any need for futher manual mixing.
In the long term, the liquor left in the bottom of the bucket makes a lovely topping for ice cream.
Tim
