Plum and Pear Paste Friday

Good Friday is one of those days I dreaded as a kid. It involved fasting, the death of Jesus (who I actually really liked, so it was traumatic), and a 3pm church service that involved kissing the feet of the massive crucifix. I didn't really mind the ritual of kissing Jesus' feet, but it bothered me that a hundred other people had kissed them before me, so how many germs were on there? In my vivid memory there was also thunder, lightning, howling wind and torrential rain, so a pretty awful day all up.

Anyhoo. Life goes on, and Good Friday is now a lovely day at home, with absolutely no reason to venture further than the kitchen. I spent all of it making plum and pear paste.

My dear friend from high school, Donna, comes to stay occasionally and brings the best of Hawkes Bay fruit with her. On Thursday night she arrived with two trays of plums and a huge carton of pears. Very exciting, but what to do with So Much Fruit?

We buy fruit pastes occasionally, but at $6+ a tiny jar, they are a luxury item. They are worth it for their intense flavour and perfect partnering with a nice sharp cheese, but how hard could they be to make?

Not hard. But you need all day. (Full disclosure, you need more than all day. It's now Saturday morning and I'm still making them. Now I know why they cost so much.)

How to:

It's really just a variation on making jam, with the added step of making a puree from the cooked fruit, and cooking for way longer.

• Fill a heavy-bottomed pot with ripe fruit. No need to peel soft fruit like plums, but do take out the pits. Peel and core tougher fruit like pears. I didn't weigh the fruit, but just filled medium sized pots to about 3/4 full, and that's made plenty enough paste.
• Slosh in a little bit of wine or water, just to get the stewing going and stop the fruit sticking.
• If you like, put in some spices or flavourings. I used vanilla pods with both the pears and plums, just because I can't get enough of vanilla these days.
• Simmer until the fruit is cooked right through. Stir so it doesn't stick or burn.
• Mash or puree the fruit until it's smooth. I just used my hand-held whizz gadget.
• Weigh the fruit pulp, and put it back in the pot.*
• Weigh out an equal amount of sugar, and mix with the pulp.
• Bring to a simmer, and simmer forever, stirring regularly...**

.... until the fruit is really thick and almost gummy. Pour a couple of big scoops of paste onto a plate and scrape the back of a spoon through it. If the paste separates, and the spoon leaves a clean line on the plate, and the paste stays separated, you're done. If not, keep simmering.

Be warned: it could take three or four hours. Or more.

You can pour the paste into sterilised jars (using the same method as for jam) or use cup cake papers in a muffin tin for a super easy alternative. When the paste patties are cool, put them in an air-tight container in the fridge. I don't know how long they will keep like that, but I predict they will be eaten long before they perish in any other way.

Troubleshooting

You may have noticed that so far I've only shown photos of the plum paste, not the pear paste. That's because the damned pear paste doesn't want to set. It's thick, but it's not thick enough to stay solid when it's turned out of the cup cake papers. So I'm giving it another chance to dry out.

An hour or two in a slow oven on fan bake should do it. If not, I'll put the fruit back in the pot and give it another simmer session. I probably should just get over myself and spread it on crackers or toast as it is. It does taste really good. But I tell you, when you turn out*** your home made fruit paste onto a cute little plate and have one of those great "I made this myself" moments... it's well worth the effort to get it looking just right.

A Handful of Tips
*Weighing hot fruit pulp on a kitchen scale is a bit of a mission, but you can simplify it by weighing just one cup of pulp, then pouring all the pulp into a multi-cup measuring jug and doing the mathematics.

**This is a time you'll be grateful for one of those simmer mats that keep the heat on the bottom of your pot even.

***If the paste doesn't want to come cleanly out of the cup cake paper, fill a cup with hot water, quickly dip the bottom of the paper in the hot water -- enough to just melt the first nanometer of the paste, then it should slip out cleanly.

Enjoy a slice of fruit paste on crackers or toast with cheese. I'm going to go with a creamy blue with the pear paste, and a hard salty cheddar with the plum paste. Yum. I wonder if lightning would strike me if I renamed the annual holiday Fruit Paste Friday?