Wild plums are in season right now in the Midwest, and this ketchup is one of my favorite wild plum recipes. Seven years ago, I put up a recipe for ketchup made from wild plums (Prunus americana or nigra will both work, as well as any common plum or stone fruit you like). It worked,…
Wild Plums
Persimmon-Acorn Pudding with Dried wild Fruit
When you look up old recipes for persimmons (many fruit for that matter) one thing you’ll often see are puddings. If you’re from America and you’re looking at the images here and wondering why this doesn’t come served in a cup, don’t worry, it’s ok. What you can technically describe as a pudding can…
American Wild Plum Leather (Tkelapi)
Wild plums (Prunus americana) are in season, and they’re a puzzle. The flesh is rich and sweet, the perfume so deeply floral it will make your toes curl, but the skins, the skins are tough, and tannic enough to make you feel like you drank a few cups of chianti straight. The two aforementioned reasons…
Fruit Scrap Vinegar
If you harvest your own fruit–any kind of fruit–you know how many leftover skins, seeds, pits, cooked stuff, raw stuff, and all kinds of other things are leftover from processing. So much scrap, from so much good fruit. If you’re anything like me, you may have wondered if there’s anything you can do with it….
Sweet and Sour Candied Wild Plums
This is one of the best wild plum recipes (as far as preserving goes) I’ve had. It should be as it’s taken me about 4 years to dial it in properly. For years I’ve been searching for a way to candy wild plums into a tart, sweet preserve with the flesh candied to a creamy…
Smoked Venison Ribs with Spicy Wild Plum Glaze
If you’re a hunter, and you throw away the ribs, all I have to say is you’re missing out, and you might consider taking them sometime, because they’re a helluva meal. As a chef, I never had time to hunt. Now, freelancing, consulting, and doing my own thing, I do have more time, and although…
Pumpkin Bread with Maple Sugar and Black Walnuts
Recently I did a big tasting menu with a couple different desserts. The crowd favorite was this pumpkinbread, spread with butter, crusted with maple sugar, griddled and smothered with wild blueberries, candied plums, soft cheese and candied black walnuts. As pictured its a bit of a process, but doing a toned-down version would be a…
Foraging and Cooking with Wild Plums
Along with crabapples, foraging wild plums is the best bang for your buck as far as volume goes, if you want an easy to harvest, delicious wild fruit, in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong I pick berries too, but the sheer ease at which I can fill my basket with plums on a good…
