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Plum delicious

The English plum season has started, although it's a shame that our native plums are quite hard to find nowadays. Even though it's been a good year for our native plums, growers are complaining that it's more economical for them to leave the fruit to rot on the trees as supermarkets prefer to buy much cheaper imported plums.

Ranging from green to red through deep purple to almost black, plums come in dozens of varieties, shapes, sizes and colours. I enjoy eating them fresh and also baked in puddings, pies, cakes and of course jam.

The translucent golden flesh of greengages has an exquisite sweet flavour

My favourites are greengages which are small to medium sized with a tender green-yellow or golden skin; the translucent golden flesh has an exquisite sweet flavour and it's regarded as one of the finest dessert plums.

Damsons are much smaller than cultivated plums and also have an excellent flavour, which when cooked is redolent of almonds with a hint of spice. Although indigestible when raw, the sharp-tasting fruit is transformed during cooking and makes wonderful jam, chutneys, pickles, pies and puddings.

The famous Victoria plum is now the most frequently grown variety in the UK. The medium to large fruit has a yellow to rose coloured skin and the pinkish flesh is rich, sweet and juicy when ripe. Before the fruit is fully ripe it's particularly good for pies and also makes excellent jam, as does the Czar, a medium to large purple-skinned plum with greenish-yellow medium sweet flesh.

Early Rivers (Rivers' Early Prolific) a small, deep purple-skinned plum with golden flesh, has a very rich sweet flavour when ripe and is ideal for both eating and cooking.

Worcestershire is the centre of UK plum production. Its most famous plum, the 'Pershore Purple', was discovered in 1902 and put the town back on the map. Pershore's month-long Plum Festival runs throughout August. This annual event was first introduced at the turn of the 1900s to bring in much needed cash to the town and features markets and lots of plum-related events.

A curious fact is that plum stones, like human fingerprints, are unique to a particular variety. Experts were able to identify over a hundred plum stones found on the Mary Rose, flagship of Henry VIII, which sank in 1545 and was raised in the 1980s.

What's your favourite plum variety, and how do you like to cook them?

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