Recipes

A favourite crumble recipe from Henrietta Green

Serves 4-6

    1.35kg plums
    Large pinch of caster sugar

For the Crumble Topping

    50g chopped walnuts
    125g granulated sugar
    100g plain flour
    100g unsalted butter, cut into dice

For the Custard

    4 egg yolks
    50g caster sugar
    1 vanilla pod
    500ml milk
    Large pinch ground cinnamon

Method

Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/gas 5

Halve and stone the plums. Arrange them in a shallow baking dish and sprinkle with sugar (how much you use depends on the ripeness and sweetness of the fruit).

To make the crumble, mix the walnuts, sugar and flour together. Rub in the butter with your fingertips until you have a crumbly texture and spread evenly over the plums. Bake in the preheated oven for about 35 minutes. If the crumble starts to brown to quickly, just protect it with a piece of foil.

Meanwhile make the custard. Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar until they thicken. In a heavy-based saucepan, bring the milk with the vanilla pod to the boil, then whisk half of the hot milk into the egg yolks and return this egg mixture back into the remaining milk, whisking continuously. Cook over a very low heat, (a heat diffuser of some sort or a bain marie is useful here) stirring with a wooden spoon until the custards thicken. Then remove from the heat, pick out the vanilla pod and add the cinnamon. Serve with the crumble.

The Victoria and Marjorie Seedling plums are well known plums but how about the Warwickshire Drooper, the Coe’s Golden Drop or Pershore which, I believe, is also called for very obvious reasons, Yellow Egg. Like apples, we seem to be able to buy only a very few varieties and so risk loosing the richness, gloriousness and diversity of the regional variations of our British plums.