Secret Summer Santa

When we arrived home from an outing last week we discovered, hanging from our front doorknob, a bright yellow bag of tiny plums, some no bigger than a good-sized cherry tomato, and all of them yellow blushing to rose pink. No note, no indication of who they were from, so I'm assuming it was a summer version of Secret Santa. Which of my neighbors is my Santa?


The plums sat on my counter for a day perfuming the whole kitchen with their summer scent while I wondered what to do with them. We don't eat much jam, so plum jam was out. Some of them could go with a pork roast I was contemplating but that left probably 2.5 pounds of the blushing beauties to be used. Even clafoutis only uses a few plums at a time. Then, the idea of a crisp came to mind and it seemed the perfect use for them.


I found a delicious-sounding recipe on epicurious.com - and I even had most of the ingredients in the house!  Huzzah! The filling required some pre-cooking and that's a drag, but I was in a cooking sort of mood, so what the heck. The recipe called for Italian prune plums, which are different than the ones I had, but I figured it was "close enough for government work."


This is a crisp with a little more authority than some I have made; it had rolled oats and sliced, toasted almonds in the topping. I actually used steel-cut oats since that's what we had on hand and they gave heft to the mixture. The topping was crunchy the first day (soggier as each successive day past, even when reheated) and complemented with its bumpy texture the smooth softness of the fruit. A dollop of very lightly sweetened whipped cream with vanilla didn't hurt, either. The recipe called for vanilla ice cream to partner the crisp but all I had was whipping cream, et voilà.


It was a little disappointing that the colors of the fruit all melded into a pretty uniform melon color rather than retaining their original yellows and reds, but I guess you can't have everything. Still, a pretty nice Secret Santa gift at a time of year when it is completely unexpected.