Time to harvest sweet orbs of joy I

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As I sit writing, it’s a gorgeous day outside. I’m hoping to get out into the garden myself at some point.

Well, I hope you all had a lovely time on Monday. Perhaps some of you took the opportunity to do a little fruit picking.

Those of us with plum trees will know that it’s that time of year; the annual glut of beautiful, juicy plums.

When we had the restaurant, our kitchen garden farm had at least half a dozen trees, and they would go crazy with the cropping – we had so many plums we genuinely didn’t know what to do with them all.

We were inundated! Off they went into sauces, sorbets, ice-creams and compotes. Even now, at the café, people plead with us to relieve them of their bumper plum harvests. We try our best!

A good tree will, in its most productive years, yield kilo upon kilo annually, so it’s always nice to have plenty of recipes on hand, ready to weather the onslaught.

Fortunately, plums are extremely versatile. Traditional jams, jellies and curds are a good place to start.

Keep a bag of stoned plums in the freezer for adding a sharp, fruity touch to pork or game stews or pies.

Try blending them with Chinese five-spice, vinegar and sizzled shallots to make a tangy barbecue sauce for shellfish, meat and poultry.

Plums make excellent chutneys and pickles, too – making a few batches now ensures you’ll have a sharp, fruity pickle to accompany cold roast meats, terrines and pâtés through the colder months.

But while they’re at their freshest and ripest, it would seem silly not to just enjoy a few recipes using them at their simple best.

Open tarts, sugar-crusted pies or croustades (my Examiner recipe at http://bit. ly/2vCkH9b can be easily modified) are perfect, as is the basic crumble, but for this week’s recipe we serve up a French classic, the clafoutis.

Hailing from the Limousin region, famed for its fruitgrowing, a clafoutis is a simple baked fruit dish, where a thick, sometimes boozy, batter is poured around soft fruit (usually cherries) and baked until risen and crusty. It’s served with chilled whipped cream or ice-cream and is one of the best ways of showing off the fruit in a simple but truly effective manner.

The juices burst forth into the light, fluffy batter, and the cold cream clashes with the hot pudding delightfully.

As you can see, I had plenty of plums at my disposal – reddish Victorias, sweet yellow mirabelles and tart greengages – my favourites – so I blended them together.

Go with what you have and enjoy these delightful fruits at their very best. For those of a sensitive disposition, the almonds can be left out and replaced with one extra egg yolk to shore things up.