Pretty Plum Pastries

21 February 2013.

What's for Dessert? -- Pretty Plum Pastries.

Somehow welcoming a package of puff pastry back into my freezer has opened up the possibility for creating a whole slew of alliterative recipe titles. I'd like to promise that this is the last one, but I don't like to make promises that I can't keep.

On Thursday, tin and I decided to play it low-key for dinner. We'd just picked up a new loaf of bread, and with a few dollops of various spreads still kicking around in the refrigerator, we figured it was about time for another sandwiches-for-dinner night. But incase you haven't noticed, I take very seriously the daily task of putting good food on our table -- and it's not that my sandwich spreads weren't good enough, but after a week of eating them for lunch, they weren't going to be new or particularly exciting anymore. With two sheets of puff pastry leftover from my pot pie recipe the night before, I thought I'd make a little dessert.

I wanted to make fruit pockets -- warm, syrupy fresh fruit all wrapped up in a darling puff pastry shell. While I have given a lot of lectures about buying food in its proper season, on my trip to the market Thursday afternoon, I couldn't resist picking up a few plums. As I made my selection and put them on the scale, my heart ached a little at the mere thought of them being transported from so far away to be sold in my corner organic market just because I wanted to go crazy and eat plums in February instead of apples. Just this once, I promised myself -- and besides, tin and I were going to really, really appreciate them. I was going to prepare them with an extra dose of love.

And so there I stood in our kitchen, tenderly opening up three little plums and removing their hard seeds -- they were soft and ripe, sweet and juicy -- I tried to forgive myself for the tiny role I'd played that day in funding environmental pollution. I'd recently learned that only four percent of German groceries are organically grown and produced, which means that, in truth, in order for me to brag about how environmentally conscious and responsible I am when I make my purchasing decisions, I am reliant upon the customer before me to make a slightly-less environmentally-friendly decision: in order for me to fill my kitchen with apples from nearby Brandenburg, another customer has to purchase the grapes from Israel, because there aren't enough apples for all of us. The truth is that above all, first and foremost, I believe in chemical-free farming and at the end of the day, if pushed, I will support an organic farmer who practices sustainable agriculture in Argentina before a German farmer who sprays his crops with pesticides and farms his soil to dust -- even if it means that my produce from Argentina must be delivered overseas. These are not easy decisions, and they are certainly personal ones -- I urge you to think about them and to decide for yourself where you have to draw the line. What feels right to you?

When I think about the eating habits of modern society and the changes that I wish to see in the world, I see three problems, and I imagine three solutions.

1. First of all, I think of packaged and processed foods. In the New York Times last week, journalist Michael Moss published an extensive article entitled "The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food" (20 Feb. 2013) in which he went to great pains to explain, in detail, the addiction that (American) society has to added fats, sugar, and salt. He writes that today, one-third of all American adults are obese (not just overweight -- obese), and one-fifth of American children. Why? There are of course a whole host of reasons -- but while not entirely to blame, the American packaged food industry is largely at fault. Today, the average shopper can't even pick up a jar of spaghetti sauce without unknowingly purchasing a candy bar. But you can take matters into your own hands: whether you purchase a jar of spaghetti sauce or a pound of fresh tomatoes is ultimately up to you. My principle reason for adopting a vegan diet was to reconnect with my natural world and to eat real food. If I could change the world in just one way, I would put real, fresh food back onto people's tables.
2. Secondly, I think of modern farming practices. For the most part, the food we eat is grown on huge plots of land devoted to single crops, and the farmer's only interest is producing as much of that crop as possible. For example: take a crop of corn. Corn farmers might be some of the worst offenders of all time, as an overwhelming majority of the corn grown in the U.S. is itself essentially inedible -- hard and tasteless, this corn is grown for the express purpose of feeding livestock or making high-fructose corn syrup. Corn farmers grow nothing but corn as far as the eye can see. This corn crop has been genetically modified so that the rows can grow impossibly close together. The crop is fertilized with chemicals, and sprayed with pesticides. Although these fertilizers might appear to help the corn grow, over time, they decrease the potential productivity of the soil. The soil suffers -- it dries out, depleted of its minerals, and becomes infertile. The farmer moves on. -- Industrial Agriculture's tree-hugging little sister is Sustainable Agriculture. The sustainable movement promotes biodiversity and crop rotation, non-chemical pesticides, and using compost and manure as fertilizer.
3. And finally, we come to my plums -- We take for granted the fact that, in our modern world, nothing is out of season. In the dead of winter, if you want a pint of strawberries, all you have to do is go to the grocery store. I'll use myself as a guilty example: my plums had to come from somewhere, because they certainly aren't growing in snowy Berlin right now. The sign in my organic market said that they were grown in Argentina. There's a lot of water between Germany and Argentina, and somehow, those plums had to make that trek. My desire for plums in February required that I engage a fleet of potentially "dirty" things that aren't particularly environmentally friendly: foods that are transported across long distances require not only the aid of ships, planes/trains/automobiles, but often the aid of large transportable cooling systems -- all of which emit harmful greenhouse gases. The answer to this problem is the local food movement, which encourages consumers to purchase produce from farmers in their region. I've written only about the environmental benefits of local food, but there are also economic benefits, and local food plays a critical role in community-building (you can start your research by simply entering "Local Food" into Wikipedia).

I'll let that be enough for today. But suffice it to say, I draw a negotiable line between concerns two and three. For me, in a world still largely overwhelmed by industrial farms, I will always chose to support a farmer who practices sustainable agriculture over a local industrial farmer. So the short and sweet of this story is that I bought the plums from the organic farm in Argentina and I managed to live with myself.


Back to the pastries.
I sliced each plum first in half, then into bite-sized pieces, and put them into a small pot with a quarter cup of water and two tablespoons of raisins. I simmered them, stirring occasionally, until they'd broken down and formed a thick syrup -- about fifteen minutes. I added about a quarter teaspoon of freshly-grated nutmeg, stirred well, and turned off the heat.
As always, I'd allowed my two sheets of puff pastry to thaw for about ten minutes, such that they were soft and pliable. You'll notice that I didn't add any sugar per se to the cooked plums (although the raisins were certainly sweet). I intended to create a sort of dance between my tart and tangy plums versus my chosen sweet addition: in the center of each sheet of puff pastry, I first placed a teaspoon of marzipan. I've used marzipan before -- in my last puff pastry dessert -- and we've had this conversation about honeybees already. My marzipan has only two ingredients: honey and almonds. Yours should also contain only almonds and a sugary binder -- you're welcome to choose one with an agave base or raw cane sugar if you don't feel comfortable using honey. I topped the marzipan with three tablespoons of fruit filling, and another teaspoon of marzipan. At this point, you should have about four tablespoons of fruit filling left over in your pot. Put the lid on it and keep it warm.

I then pulled the four corners of the pastry dough together toward the center and pinched the seams together to form a closed square pocket. I brushed the tops with margarine and placed them on a lined baking sheet. I followed the instructions on my box of puff pastry, putting mine into a preheated oven at 350 degrees for about fifteen minutes, until the tops were golden brown and flaky.
When it was time for dessert, I ladled out a scoop of plum filling into the bottom of each bowl, placing the plum pastry on top in the center. I dusted the tops of each pastry with a tiny bit of powdered sugar, and added a spoonful of natural soy yoghurt -- you could use a coconut- or soy-based ice cream if you choose.

A nice spoonful of the cold, tangy yoghurt with tart plums, the smooth & sweet marzipan with the chewy-yet-flaky crust was almost like eating a homemade pie at my grandmother's house. They did have the same main ingredient, after all: love.

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The Nitty-Gritty.

Ingredients:

two sheets of vegan puff pastry dough

three plums (about 1.5 cups chopped)

¼ tsp fresh nutmeg

2 Tbsp raisins

4 tsp marzipan

vegan margarine

powdered sugar

soy yoghurt

Procedure:

1. Wash and chop three plums into bite-sized pieces (about 1.5 cups chopped). Add raisins, cover, and simmer in ¼ cup water, stirring occasionally, until plums have formed a thick syrup. Stir in ¼ tsp nutmeg and remove from heat.

2. Allow two sheets of puff pastry to thaw for about ten minutes, until soft and pliable. In the center of each sheet, place 1 tsp of marzipan. Top with 3 Tbsp of fruit filling, and another tsp of marzipan. You should have some filling leftover (about 4 Tbsp) -- keep warm.

3. Bring the corners of the puff pastry together -- pinch closed. Pinch along the seams to tightly seal the pastry, such that you create a closed square pocket. Smear the tops of each pastry with ½ tsp of vegan margarine.

4. Bake on a lined baking sheet for fifteen minutes in a 350 degree oven (or according to the instructions on your box of puff pastry), until pastries are golden brown and flaky.

5. To serve, place each baked pastry atop a serving of the remaining plum filling. Top the pastries with a dusting of powdered sugar, and a tablespoon of natural soy yoghurt (can be substituted with soy- or coconut-based ice cream).