Peak Season
Italian Prune Plums
$5.99per item
Small, deep purple, and oval rather than round — these are the baking plums, and they're only here for a few weeks. The flesh is amber-gold, dense, and much less juicy than a table plum, with a honeyed sweetness and a bright tang right under the skin. The stone slips free clean, which is why generations of bakers have reached for these and nothing else.
That low moisture is the whole point. Where other plums turn a tart into soup, these hold their shape and concentrate as they cook, going jammy and almost caramelized at the edges.
In the kitchen: Halve, pit, and lay them cut side up in a buttered dish with sugar and a splash of lemon for the simplest possible tart. These are the plums called for in Marian Burros' Plum Torte — the most requested recipe in the history of the New York Times. Cook them down into jam or butter — they set beautifully with almost no help. Or halve and dry them, which is where prunes actually come from.
Good eaten out of hand too, especially once the skin wrinkles slightly and the sugars come up.
That low moisture is the whole point. Where other plums turn a tart into soup, these hold their shape and concentrate as they cook, going jammy and almost caramelized at the edges.
In the kitchen: Halve, pit, and lay them cut side up in a buttered dish with sugar and a splash of lemon for the simplest possible tart. These are the plums called for in Marian Burros' Plum Torte — the most requested recipe in the history of the New York Times. Cook them down into jam or butter — they set beautifully with almost no help. Or halve and dry them, which is where prunes actually come from.
Good eaten out of hand too, especially once the skin wrinkles slightly and the sugars come up.
