When you go through long bitter cold winters like we did for the last couple of years, you can't wait for summer to come. You can't wait for the sunny summer days and shady afternoons in the back yard sipping a drink waiting for your dinner cooking on the grill.. Then biting into a plump juicy piece of fruit. I know we now have the luxury of having all kind of fruits all year round, but it is not the same, a real summer fruit, a peach, in summer is simply not the same as a peach in winter. I still have this naive notion that we have winter fruit and summer fruit. So after months of grape fruit, oranges and apples, I found some plums at the store last week. They were hard to the touch, but I told myself "maybe if I left them on the counter for a couple of days they will ripen". So I bought a box. And I left them on the kitchen counter for a couple of days. Nothing happened. I put them in a paper bag to speed up the process. Two days later, still nothing. No, actually one went bad. I decided then that it was a lost cause, that summer was not here yet, and that I had to get rid of the hard plums. But, as I was reaching for the garbage can, I remembered what my dad and the good nuns at school used to warn me about " this food you are going to throw away, a child, somewhere in the world, cannot find it, and he goes hungry". That stopped me in my tracks. I put the bag back on the table and sat in front of it. "What am I going to do with you?" I asked the plums.. then it dawned on me, let me try this. I rinsed the plums, pitted them, cut them in bite size, put them in a bowl and sprinkled some sugar on them, and added maybe 1/2 cup of water, thinking it will make them tender and sweet. I covered the bowl and refrigerated it. The next day, I reached for the bowl of plums: still nothing. They were still crunchy and bitter !! But I didn't give up: I transferred them to a sauce pan, added some more water, another 1/2 cup or so, and let them cook over very low heat. When I thought they were done, I removed them from the stove, drizzled them with the juice of 1/2 a lime I had on hand and let them stand. When they cooled down, I put them back in their bowl and took them to the refrigerator with a warning "This is your last chance!" The next day they were delicious, plump, tender, sweet but a little bit tart. Perfect. I served them on Sham El Nessim topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Delicious.
RED AND WHITE TRIFLE
You think I learned from last week? Think again. Yesterday, I was at the store and got attracted by the sweet smell of strawberries. There they were, boxes upon boxes of seemingly delicious aromatic red plump strawberries. I came home carrying my precious find, announcing that summer was finally here. You have to know that the strawberries I grew up eating were much smaller, but if you had 4 strawberries at home, the whole block would know that you got strawberries! They were so amazingly sweet that we used to top them with plain yogurt, not ice cream or whipped cream. I immediately chose a couple who seemed more ripe than the others and bit into one. It was crunchy like a cucumber, had no taste at all, but still smelled good. What to do now? No problem, I said to myself, and started working on them. Chop, chop, sprinkle some sugar and in the fridge you go. The next day, I knew I couldn't cook them like the plums from the other day (they'll become jam or preserve, I learned that from my aunts who used to make a lot of preserves in summer). So I opted for another approach: I knew I had a pound cake in the freezer, I always keep some, just in case. And in the pantry I must have some whip and serve jell-o pudding, and don't forget the leftover plums compote. So there you have it, all the ingredients for a good dessert: red fruit, white pudding..trifle!!
Reserve about 4 or 5 strawberries for decoration. Slice the pound cake in 1/2 inch or less slices, spread some strawberry preserve on them and arrange the slices in the bottom of a glass bowl. Slice the strawberries you kept aside and arrange the slices like small triangles around the sides of the bowl. Add some fruit (the strawberries and the plums with some of their juices) and spread 1 or 2 spoonfuls of pudding that you have made according to the package directions (stir the content in 2 cups of cold milk). Repeat: cake, fruit, pudding. Slice one or two remaining strawberries but not all the way to the stem. Apply a little pressure to the fruit and it will open like a fan. Put them on top of your dessert. Refrigerate. Serve in small bowls, it's very refreshing. You'll think summer is here already.
Oh, and did I tell you? I also got our first watermelon of the season!!!
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