Plum Sauce two ways

Sweet Plum Sauce

I've mentioned the damson plum tree before. Well, last year it didn't do much fruiting. This year, though, it's back on form. And it's harvest time.

Plums on the tree

The trouble is, they're not eating plums; too tart. I made plum jam a few years ago. The recipe called for so much sugar to offset the acid that I could barely eat it, in the end. And it gets tiresome after a while anyway.

Lots of plums

But, being cheap as I am, I couldn't sit around and watch all of the plums fall to the ground to rot. So this weekend I collected a colander full and got down to making some sauces.

The first was a chinese style sauce. Tangy, spicy, garlicy, salty. I started with this recipe, but I didn't follow along exactly.

Chinese style plum sauce

The second was a plum version of cranberry sauce. We were having roast chicken and I thought it appropriate. It was sweeter, and chunkier, but still very plummy (photo at the top). This one I more or less made up. About 12 plums, about a third of cup of sugar, some orange juice, and a pinch of salt.

It was very tasty on that roast chicken. I'm going to make some dumplings or something for the chinese sauce.