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When I bit into one of these attractive plums, I knew I’d made a mistake. It was plump and juicy. It should have been sweet. Surprise, it was sour. I stood there with the plum in my hand, wondering what to do with a box full of sour fruit. While I stood and pondered, the sour taste took me back in time to my my parent’s house in Caracas.
The house had a small, grassy back yard where my mother grew roses and set up a bird feeder on a pole. Two old mango trees with a hammock strung up between them shaded our outdoor naps. When my parents first took the house, both trees were infested with some tropical fungus and didn’t produce fruit. Mom hosed them down fiercely, twice a day, and eventually the trees healed and started producing mangoes again.
Lots of mangoes. We would just slice a sweet, juicy, ripe one and eat it over the kitchen sink. Left a wicker basket full of mangoes by the door and obliged any visitor to take some on their way out. There were so many, we discovered ways to serve them green. Did you know that you can substitute green mangoes for apples in pie? It’s delicious.
In the evenings after dinner, a neighbor or two would drop by and sit down with my Dad on the front porch. Mom would set shot glasses and a bottle of rum on a small table there, with a plate of sliced green mangoes. The men would dip the sour fruit into salt and savor their drinks with this piquant nibble. The ladies would sit slightly apart with Mom, usually drinking lemonade, sometimes beer. Once in a while one would get up and reach for a slice of mango biche.
Soft voices of women speaking Spanish, men chuckling together and smoking cigars. Warm night scented with jasmine. Green mangoes, rum, cool drinks. More peaceful times in Venezuela than now.
Well. A lot of memories sprung up from a mouthful of green fruit. But I still needed to do something with those plums.
And I had this chicken that needed roasting. I knew from the mangoes that the plums’ hidden sweetness would emerge with a dusting of salt, so I put them together, adding an encouraging drizzle of date honey as well. Then my eye fell on a big purple plum that I knew was sweet, so I added it to the roasting pan. It turned the cooking juices a lovely wine color.
Roast Chicken With Sour Yellow Plums
serves 5-6
Ingredients:
1 roasting chicken
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
dustings of salt and white pepper
4 sour yellow plums, halved and pitted. Use sour apples or peeled green mangoes if no plums available.
1 large red onion, sliced
1 large, sweet red plum
1/4 cup sweet or semi-sweet white wine
2 tablespoons silan date honey, or maple syrup, or plain honey
Method:
Preheat oven to 350° F – 180° C.
1. Rinse and dry the chicken. Drizzle the olive oil over it, and rub it into the skin and flesh of the chicken thoroughly. Powder the chicken with the dry spices.
2. Place the chicken on the rack of a roasting pan. Put the yellow plums here and there around the bird. Scatter the sliced red onion over it. Place the purple plum on the rack so that it will cook and drip juice onto the bottom of the roasting pan.
3. Pour the wine into the roasting pan. Lightly salt the yellow plums, then drizzle the date honey or other sweet syrup over them. Pour a little olive oil over the onion slices to prevent their drying up.
4. Roast the bird for 1 hour, basting occasionally with the pan juices. Mix the juices up a little with a long-handled spoon or the tip of the basting tube, so that the red plum juice colors them. Make sure to baste the yellow plums with this; it gives them an appetizing reddish tinge.
When the chicken’s roasted through, remove from the oven, allow it to rest 10 minutes, and serve.
