Plum Sauce 2009

After a bit more cooking, adding more plum puree and tinkering - I have decided that I have a satisfactory plum sauce - for 2009. Last year's has a lot more smooth gingery sweetness, but I'm not sure if that's a result of curing in the jar (it is, afterall, a bit like a chutney!).

Here's the recipe I arrived at - mind you, I added additional plum puree three times after reducing the entire pot about 1-1.5" - next year, I will reduce the vinegar by about half and might use malt or rice vinegar instead of apple cider.

• 12 c plum puree
• 3 chopped white onions
• 3 Tb finely minced garlic (use the garlic press)
• 10 Tb finely minced fresh ginger (mini-food processor)
• 3 t Chinese 5 spice
• 1 small cassia cinnamon stick
• 4-5 star anise pods (unbroken - fish them out later)
  
• 1 t salt
• 1 c apple cider vinegar
• 4 c Sucanat/brown sugar
  
• 1/4 c (wheat free) soy sauce
• 1/2 c currants

After letting it rest overnight - the flavor was pretty good - a bit more vinegary but that might change after a couple months in the jar. I pureed two big batches of it, leaving some chunks of ginger and currant for texture.

YIELD:
12 - 8 oz jars
16 - 4 oz jars

I will give this a chance before giving it all away - last year I was so sick and tired of persimmons that I gave away nearly all the persimmon chutney and three months after making it realized I had very little left and it was very very tasty! Fortunately, I still have some persimmon pulp in the freezer which will go into a persimmon cake and persimmon sorbet for an August birthday, and the rest will be a new batch of persimmon chutney. That is, after I get done with plums, apricots and the figs I plan to pick on Monday!

Plum Sauce - Smacking myself in the head!

Last year, I took the puree from the jelly bag after making plum jelly and turned it into a wonderful plum sauce. As usual, I researched several variations of recipes and threw together and adjusted as I went since none of the recipes call for plum puree, but for whole plums. The plum sauce turned out amazing - dark, smoky, sweet, spicy, salty, garlicky and a hint of ginger - better than barbeque sauce. It's even a nice dark BBQ sauce brown.

This year, I got smart in terms of the puree production and used a Kitchen Aid attachment to get all the pulp out of the skins and mush - I got quite a lot of pulp: 24 cups!

So, I started putting together the plum sauce - 8 cups of puree and 3 chopped white onions, and then started scouring my blog, bookmarks and print-outs for which plum sauce recipes I consulted. I came up with very little that indicates what inspired last year's delciousness and so far, the sauce isn't turning out quite the same. I'm simmering it down now - and I may add more plum puree and adjust it a bit more.

Here's what I have so far:

• 10 c plum puree
• 3 chopped white onions
• 3 T finely minced garlic (use the garlic press)
• 3 T finely minced fresh ginger (mini-food processor)
• 3 t Chinese 5 spice
• 1 small cassia cinnamon stick
• 4-5 star anise pods (unbroken - fish them out later)
  
• 1 t salt
• 1 c apple cider vinegar
• 2 c Sucanat
• 1/4 c (wheat free) soy sauce

Re-reading other forums and recipes, it seems like they all call for a lot more sugar and vinegar - I don't remember using so much last year. In fact, it seemed rather simple and I just wish I could dig up my recipe. I'll let it simmer for a while and then cool it down so I can taste it properly against last year's version - welcoming any advise on recipe adjustments.