Apples and Plums... Oh My. Asian Plum Sauce and Apple Butter.

While still in the throes of dealing with nature's bountiful gifts this year of apples and plums, I decided to finish off the last 3 1/2 pounds of Italian Prune Plums with a batch of Chinese Plum Sauce.

This many apples will make a batch of apple butter

Apples? Oh YEAH we have apples this year. Previously I made and froze apple pie filling for 12 pies. Now neatly wrapped and stacked in the shop freezer. A friend, who is also up to her eyeballs in apples and pears, gave me a super recipe for crockpot apple butter. Fabulous!. Easy peasy!! No standing and stirring and stirring over a hot pot. Just put the peeled cored and chopped apples in the crockpot with the sugar and spices and go about your merry way.  

First: Chinese Plum Sauce. I like the sauce just a bit sweeter and each batch of plums will have its own level of sweetness.....so about half way through the cooking process I stop and taste and add some more sugar if needed. Makes about 6 half pints, plus a little dish extra.  I think we will have to have pot stickers tomorrow.

4 cloves of garlic minced
1/2 oz of fresh ginger minced
1 onion minced
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar (or more to taste)
2 cups of water
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil (no substitutes)
1/2 tsp crushed dried chilies
3 or 4 pounds of ripe plums pitted and chopped
3 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 tbsp water

Put all of the ingredients, except the cornstarch and water, into a stock pot and bring to a boil.  (If you don't have fresh ginger....I used a heaping tsp of ground ginger. ) Reduce to a low simmer and uncovered let gently cook for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to keep from burning on the bottom.  Taste to see if sweet enough if not, add about another 1/8 cup of sugar and cook some more.  Remember......Chinese Plum Sauce is not supposed to be sweet like a sweet and sour sauce.

Blend the mixture, either in a blender or using an immersion blender (my preferrence) until smooth.   Mix the cornstarch and water together and while stirring constantly add to the sauce.  Simmer and stir for several minutes until smooth and thickened.
 
Ladle into 1/2 pint jars and process for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath.

Next: Apple Butter

Oh man, is this an easy way to make apple butter.  Next year I may try it for pear butter.

5 to 6 pounds of apples, peeled, cored and finely chopped.
4 cups white sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp salt.

Put the apples into a large crock pot.  Toss well with the sugar and spices and salt.   Cover and cook on high for one hour.

Just starting to cook down.

 Reduce to low and cook for 9 to 11 hours.  Stir once in a while.  The mixture will start reducing and become browner.

Halfway done.  Starting to get mooshey and thicker.

At this point it was getting late so I just shut the cooker off and went to bed and started it up again in the morning.  Cook until the apples are almost mush. 3 more hours  Break out the trusty immersion blender again and being careful not to splatter yourself with the scalding mush, YIKES  HOT!!.....blend until desired texture.  I like mine with a bit of chunks still in the apple butter.

Done! Thick and tasty.

Ladle into 1/2 pint jars and process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.  This recipe made 7 1/2 pint jars.

TIPS:   To make your life easier if you plan to preserve, can or make jams.  Have on hand, a canning funnel, a jar lifter, some good metal ladles for scooping out the product into the funnel and several small tongs for lifting jars and lids from boiling water.

I'm Jammin'....Hope You Like Jammin' Too.

You can feel Fall in the air. The mornings are crisp, cool and clear. Some of the trees have even begun to turn color. The fruit trees are loaded and people who have gardens are desperate to unload their excess onto anyone who will take squash, zucchini or anything else.

After our war with the robins and race to see who would get the cherries from the sour cherry tree....we won by the way.... we have been inundated with wild plums and peaches. Hating to see this bounty go to waste, I've been canning and jammin' (Bob Marley reference here)

Wild plums are something that you have to experience and are hard to explain just how fablulous they are.



Slightly smaller than ping pong balls, they are sour. Pucker your face sour. However, once made into a jam or jelly. They turn from reddish yellow sour balls into the best sweet and tart reddish orange jam. Some years we have a lot. Some years, not so much. It even varies from tree to tree. One tree will bloom and bear fruit, while the tree right next to it will be just a week behind or ahead on the blossom schedule and be barren. Timing is everything.

This year I made two batches of wild plum jam. We gave most of last years batch away as gifts and ate it all up before winter was over.

Peaches Galore

My husband oversees some properties that are owned by absentee landlords. This year one of the peach trees was loaded, almost to the breaking point, with small peaches. Since no one is going to be coming up to use the fruit, we get to harvest it when we can. From the peaches I made Peach Jam, Sour Cherry Peach Jam and Peach Barbeque Sauce. There were so many peaches we gave over half of them away to other ladies (gluttons for punishment) who also like to cook and can.

These are just a few of the jars of the different jams. All in all about 4 dozen jars.


I love the jewel tones they have when the light shines through. Almost like a stained glass window in a church. The miracle of being able to preserve the bounty of summer and fall and enjoy throughout the cold winters.

In the freezer are still more peaches and sour cherries.

As if this all wasn't enough. I have a friend who's husband made a huge and I mean huge over an acre garden. She has loaded me up with green beans. So.....spicy garlic dilled beans.



The recipies for jams are easily made from the pectin package recipies. For the peach and sour cherry jam, I just substituted 2 cups of chopped cherries for two cups of chopped peaches.

Apple Butter

More apples. We are down to two ice chests full. One consists of the smaller and more tart apples from one tree and the other is STILL full of the Red Delicious. We can only stomach so many cakes. I made two more cakes today and froze one of them.

In a desperate attempt to use these apples before they go bad, I decided to make chunky apple butter. So simple and a great thing to do with fruit that is not perfect.

APPLE BUTTER

• 4 or more pounds of apples
• 1 cup cider vinegar
• 2 cups sugar
• dash of salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• juice and zest of one lemon.

Peel, core and coarsley chop up the apples. Cut out the bad or brown spots first. The best way I've found to do this is to use a potato peeler to take off the skins. Then just set the apple bottom down on the cutting board and make a cut vertically down one side of the apple close to the core. Turn the apple, make another cut......repeat until you have left the core of the apple. It will look like a square or pentagon, depending on how big your apple is. Don't worry if there is some skin still left on the apple, because you are going to cook it into a mush and the skins contain pectin.

Put the apple chunks in a large stew pan with the 1 cup of cider vinegar. Stew over low heat until they are soft. Mash with a potato masher or put through the sieve of a food mill if you want a smoother apple butter.

Add the sugar, lemon, salt and spices. Simmer and stir frequently until it is very thick or until when you put a glop of apple butter on a saucer there is no liquid leaking out around the edges.

Spoon into sterilized half pint jars and put on the sterilized lids and screw bands. Put into a water bath and process at boiling for 10 minutes.

If you have never canned before, there are some good sites on the net that will give you a basic tutorial. I highly recommend getting the book "Putting Food By". It will walk you through the process. This has been my canning Bible for years and years.