September 17, 2012 | Fruit, Meat & Poultry
My apologies on the finished photos for this dish in advance – I hadn’t really planned to blog about the dish, but as it was coming together and I sampled the first bite before serving my husband, I knew this would be a recipe you would want to try!
After my mammoth plum harvest, I was looking for something to make that was different than everything else plum oriented I’ve blogged about. After reading a friend’s blog post about plum slump, I couldn’t get the idea of roasted plums turned into a condiment out of my mind.
And if there is any meat that just screams for fruit as an accompaniment, it’s pork – as in “pork chops and applesauce”, you know? But I find applesauce a bit boring, and wanted to add some zing. So after drizzling those quartered Italian plums above with balsamic vinegar and sprinkling them with chopped fresh rosemary…
…I roasted them for 20 minutes, then stirred the hot fruit into a sort of thick jam type of condiment. The skins give off that lovely purple color which turns the flesh from light orange to crimson.
I hope you take note of the bit of pink showing in my chops. I marinated them in an olive oil, balsamic, and rosemary mixture, and then grilled them to just barely medium. After resting they still had a tiny tinge of pink in them, but more importantly, they were tender as could be. And the plum sauce with them? In a word, divine. Even my husband who isn’t really a pork fan ate his entire large chop. And guess what, because both balsamic and rosemary go with vanilla, you can use the leftover fruit as topping for a nice big bowl of vanilla ice cream. Now aren’t you glad I posted this after all?
- 2-4 cups quartered plums, pits discarded
- balsamic vinegar
- 2-3 tablespoons minced fresh rosemary
- Spread plums on a baking sheet lined with foil. Drizzle with just enough balsamic vinegar to coat, but make sure you don’t have too much excess pooling in the pan. Sprinkle with rosemary over the top and bake at 375 degrees for 15-20 minutes, until fruit is soft. Let cook slightly, then pour into a bowl and stir all together. Serve as a fruit coulis on grilled pork chops or as a topping for vanilla ice cream.
