Midday Muse: How does your garden grow...

In answer to Casa's Midday Muse I'd like to share photos of the bounty that is just starting to come in from our garden. Yes. It's a bit late. But we had so much going on mid-May with family events (a wedding, a baby shower, and the birth), garden refreshment, patio reclamation, and completeing a few interior redesign projects that our planting was delayed until mid-June. That's very late and well into the growing season in Pennylvania to be sure.

Still - our garden has come in all of its bountiful glory. Our tomato plants are loaded with fruit that is just beginning to mature. We also have had a steady crop of yellow & green bell peppers, banana peppers, jjalapenos and habaneros since about mid-July. I also don't want to forget the plums. Our plum tree is absolutely overloaded with Italian prune plums and I am setting up my kitchen to make some wonderful sweet and spicy Plum & Habanero Jam.

Habaneros do pack quite a kick so a little will go a long way. But the sweetness of the plums will offset it just a bit and the natural citrus-like flavor of the hababeros will add an interesting depth of flavor to the traditional. I'm also going to add just a touch of nutmeg just to shake things up a bit.

08/17/2008
My Spicy-Sweet Plum Sauce, Chunky Plum Chutney, and Sweet Plum Refrigerator Jam were quite a hit yesterday.

I made a 3 course dinner for my husband with the secret ingredient being --guess what-- plums.

• First course featured a fresh salad of arrugula and red onion tossed with a bit of classic Greek vinagrette, slices of French feta, garnished with a drizzle of Chunky Plum Chutney.


• The second course consisted of chipped top round of beef, marinated in garlic and olive oil. This was seared and tossed with a sautee of red onions and yellow and green banana peppers, finished with my Spicy-Sweet Plum Sauce, served atop a toasted portugese roll.


• Dessert featured a generous mound of vanilla ice cream and mango sorbet, garnished with a drizzle of Sweet Plum Refrigerator Jam, served on top of chewy sugar cookies.

My husband got quite a kick out of the Top Chef inspired feast and even requested another go round of the menu for his lunch today.

All in all I harvested about 10 pounds of plums, all turned out into the jam. One of the things that I think made my various jams such a hit is the fact that I cut back on the sugar tremendously, using only 1/2 cup of sugar per pound of plums.

Honestly, I had so much jam I needed to share so I gave a 12 oz jar (1 of each variety) to my next door neighbor. She and her husband thoroughly enjoyed the mixtures and I have been invited to partake of as many peaches from her tree as I like. Interesting this: She and I had a rather interesting exchange of veggies last year when I planted eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes. She, in turn for the fresh veggies, gifted me with a couple quarts of home-canned tomatoes. I'm saving them until the anniversary date of 09/08 to actually try them but they are very well done and I do appreciate it very much.

Another neighbor stopped by yesterday and I gave him a jar of the Sweet Plum Refrigerator Jam. His wife loved it and promptly issued me an invitation to take from their pear tree as I wished. The husband, newly acquainted with my love of pears, even dropped by with a bag of ripe pears this morning.

Needless to say this has turned into a wonderful exchange between us and I am delighted to share. Most of the fruit that I picked this morning is not quite ripe but once it has ripened I'll be making more of versions of my refrigerator jams, sweet-spicy sauces, and chutneys and will share them out in kind. I can't tell you how much I am enjoying this or how much I imagine I will enjoy it come the deep freeze of a Pennsylvania winter.

So tonight's dinner was a rather simple meal and one that I think would be best described as "a very original stir fry". Boneless, skinless breasts of chicken, drawn and pounded to 1/4 inch in thickness, were marinated in a blend of dry mustard and garlic with a touch of soy sauce. While that was marinating I sauteed a melange of fresh peppers from my garden, corn, and .plums in olive oil. Then added to that, a healthy handful of fettucine. I fried and tossed the mixture until the vegetables were crisp-tender then I removed the vegetables and pasta from the pan and seared the chicken, deglazing the pan with a touch of summer ale and Chunky Plum Chutney [about 4 tablespoons or so]. When the chicken was done I removed it to a plate and added the veggies and pasta back in to soak up the liquid and then served it immediately garnishing with a healthy bunch of fresh arrugula.

My husband gave it a rating of "most delicious" in the "most adventurous food" catagory and dubbed the dish "Pollo Plum Loco". That's all for the good as far as I'm concerned.