I am not the most organised person in the kitchen, so it is quite common to find unlabelled jars and containers of foodstuffs in the fridge. With the shelves bulging with leftover things from the holiday season, it has been easy to confuse similar coloured foods. What I thought was left over summer pudding juice to put on my yoghurt, was actually spicy plum sauce! It was quite a shock to the taste buds but tasted okay with the addition of the berry juice.
I have been on a mission to find the best tasting plum sauce recipe. The recipes so far have been smooth in texture. I may try a chunky one before the end of the season. I am not much of a fan of eating fresh plums other than in fruit salads but I love cooking with blood plums. Their colour is so deep and rich.
Plum Sauce 1 was a lovely colour. The BW didn’t like it, I think I put in too much vinegar. It went well with duck breasts.
(PS This sauce has improved with age.)
Plum sauce 2 has more Asian flavours. This is our favourite.
The sauce ended up quite reduced which has made it a good dipping sauce but also works well if thinned out a little with water. We had it with roasted pork belly (how decadent!). I always cook pork belly Bill Granger’s way. It cooks for long time so the meat just falls apart and the fat is rendered off.
So, after making two savoury sauces, I tried a sweet plum sauce.
Plum Sauce 3 sweet produced a deep colour that tempts you to eat it. The taste is almost like berries. I think it would go well with steamed puddings or maybe pancakes( Shrove Tuesday coming up!)
I carefully placed these in different places in the fridge for later labelling. But of course that didn’t happen so now there are 3 types of sauce all looking much the same!
As long as the blood plums are still in season I will continue to try out different recipes but will make sure I label them! Even the beetroot I pickled is the same colour!
aah, yes, the joys of labeling (or un-labeling.) I tend to do the un-labeling with saved seeds, thinking I will remember – after all, how could I forget! YUP! forget all the time. Makes me so mad (at myself really!)
I can see how un-labeling in the refrigerator can lead to some interesting finds. I have gotten really good at labeling in the fridge, now I just need to do better with the seeds.
We seem to have too much faith in our memory!
We run into unlabelled jars all the time in the fridge – usually the excess from preserving which we’d stuck in the fridge to use up “soon”.
We made a spicy plum sauce a few years ago with President plums, but have yet to use up the bottles! I guess we don’t eat nearly as much of it as I’d assumed we would..
I have the same problem in the freezer with unlabelled containers. My freezer is improving though as I have been using your idea of snap lock bags!
At least i know what to buy you for your birthday this year – a labeller!
Whichever sauce we had with the duck was so yummy! Tim was raving about it to everyone
That pork belly looks so good – I’ll have to try that recipe…