What to do with all these plums?

Good evening and greetings from my busy kitchen. I am sitting here currently waiting on a Plum Galette to finish baking and my husband is reading the newspaper. The dishes are piled...to my utter annoyance...but I am taking a break to blog a little here. A few weeks back, I purchased a basket of purple plums at the local grocery store. I really like plums, so I was happy to get a good deal on them. When I brought them home we noticed that they were not quite ripe enough to eat, so we set them in our fruit bowl which sits in our kitchen window and waited for them to be ready. A few days later, I grabbed one during the day and thought...surely they are ready to eat now, but as I bit into it, I was sadly disappointed as they were completely tasteless. We waited some more days and this time my husband took one to enjoy and again to a sad ending, the plum had no flavor. We concluded that these plums (not from Sweden) were picked WAY too early and would never taste much. Since I don't believe in throwing out food if it's still edible (thanks mom for that!) I looked around for what I could do with 20 plums. I found a recipe for a plum sufflé, but unfortunately that called for dry plums. So I finally googled "What to do with all these plums?" and found a great recipe. I love google for the soul reason that you can ask your question just the way you are thinking and 9 out 10 times there is some site that will help you. I found a recipe for something called Plum Galette. With a crust that you would use for an apple pie you place the plum mixture in the middle of the crust and then fold up the sides to make it look like am open pie. I think the whole thing sounded pretty good and it was perfect timing, as I was asked to bring a dessert to a Christmas party tomorrow night. So now I have rid myself of these virtually tasteless plums, in hopes that in this pie they will taste delicious! Now the only question is "What to make for dinner?"...

Until my next post...turn your hopeless foods into a treat!

Barefoot and Baking in the kitchen

Dough is prepared

 

 

 

 

The plums are sliced and ready to be mixed

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slices of plums

 

Dough in the pan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plum Mixture

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plum Galette!

 

 

 

 

 

Time to bake!

 

 

 

 

 

Plum Galette Recipe

The amount of sugar needed depends on the tartness of the plums. If all you have are fairly ripe, and therefore fairly sweet, plums, use a little less sugar and add a little lemon juice.

Ingredients

1 recipe pate brisee pie crust
6-8 tart plums, pitted and sliced (about 1 1/4 pounds net)
1/4 cup raisins (preferably golden)
1/4 cup chopped pecans
Zest from one lemon
2 Tbsp flour
1/2 cup sugar

Method

1 In a medium sized bowl, gently toss the plum slices with the raisins, pecans, lemon zest, flour and sugar.
2 Preheat oven to 375°F. If you are using homemade chilled pie dough, remove it from the refrigerator to let stand for 10 minutes before rolling out.
3 Lightly flour a clean surface and roll out the pie dough to a 13-inch round of even thickness.

4 Place rolled-out pie dough in the center of a small-rimmed, lightly buttered baking sheet. Place plum mixture in the center of the pie dough round, leaving a border of 2 inches on all sides. Fold the edges of the pie crust up and over so that circle of the filling is visible.
5 Place in the middle rack of the oven. Bake at 375°F for 40-50 minutes, until the crust is lightly browned and the filling is bubbly. Cool on a rack for an hour before serving.

Makes six servings.