Plum Work: The First Stage
UNRIPE, green plums are poisonous. But the amount of toxins present is tiny, and apparently, as long as you don’t ingest a crazy number of plums, the poison isn’t a big deal. It’s just like apple cores and apple seeds in that sense.
I’m not an expert on the topic, but due to this reason, I’ve never eaten untreated and unripe plums before. Instead, I dig into processed plum products every year without fail. As a result, plums ended up as one of my favorite foods.
They are extremely versatile. You can eat salty and sour umeboshi plain, or you can use it as a topping on steaming rice. You can turn umeboshi into pulp and use that in your recipes, such as simmered sardines with umeboshi. Many simmered dishes, in fact, have good compatibility with these pickled plums, a little like how Western dishes often use cranberry in savory dishes.
I repeat, I’m not an expert, so I can’t tell you whether this information is scientifically proven. However, umeboshi have always been prized for their amazing antibacterial properties since ancient times, and just the addition of one or two will prevent your lunchbox from going off as quickly. I’d made it a point to always put these marvelous plums into my packed lunch, and whenever I have an upset stomach, I eat umeboshi for the same reason.
They say that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but to me, umeboshi are the miracle remedy for most digestive system problems, whether it be diarrhea or gastroenteritis. Whenever I’m down and suffering, I would crush umeboshi and dissolve it in hot water before slowly sipping the water with a hint of sourness and saltiness. I feel this remedy would speed up my recovery and give me a boost of energy. I don’t know whether it’s a placebo effect or the umeboshi actually helping me, but I always get better eventually.
In fact, I even rely on this drink every time I catch a horrible cold that feels like torture. If I got sick of the taste of umeboshi in hot water, I’d start sipping on watered-down ume kombucha.
Even when I’m fit and healthy, I can’t go without plums. Eating umeboshi with rice first thing in the morning helps me wake up with its tangy sourness. The intense sweet-and-sour umeboshi jam spread on toast has the same effect. Diluting plum syrup with sparkling water transforms it into a refreshing beverage that I can drink all day.
Let’s move on to the seasonings you can make with plums. I can soak a small amount of kombu and umeboshi in soy sauce to make ume soy sauce. I can mix chopped umeboshi with miso paste to make ume miso. Oh, and how can I forget about ume liqueur? A light layer of salted plum juice on top of seasoned nori from the supermarket is criminally delicious when paired with rice.
In conclusion, if I persevered during this season and got my plum work right, I can enjoy the taste of plums throughout the entire year.
Compared to other countries, the traditional food preservation culture of Japan isn’t as developed. Like I mentioned before, we Japanese seem to place a higher priority on taste, rather than long shelf lives. But plums are so prized that we even coined the term “plum work,” and we’ve been experimenting with them for millennia. Perhaps there are still many more ways of processing plums out there waiting for me to discover.
Okay, so as you can see, I love plums. And so, I’m sure you can imagine my excitement when I went on my routine grocery shopping trip a few days after our wedding and saw the magnificent piles of plums on display in the supermarket. They weren’t just any plum—they were Nanko plums, which are famous for being one of the highest quality variety of plums available on the market.
I immediately whipped out my phone and called Rei.
He picked up immediately. “Hello, hello! How can I help you? Do you want to order some pastries?”
My eyes were glued to the Nanko plums, inspecting their quality with my eyes as I replied, “I’m afraid not. I was just wondering whether your delivery van is in use. Can I borrow it for a bit?”
“Ohhh? Doing some shopping?”
“Yes. I found Nanko plums in the supermarket. I’m actually checking their luster and condition right now, but they seem to be decent, so I’m thinking about buying them in bulk. I have plans to purchase our own car, but I think that’ll take a while. If it’s not too much trouble, I would like to borrow yours.”
“Ah, plums! As a preserve hobbyist, you can’t miss out on those! Hmm… I don’t use much of them in Western confectionery, but I do use a little bit. From a business standpoint, trying new things would be beneficial too. Ooookay! Wait for me, I’ll head over right now. I should take around ten or fifteen minutes.”
My eyes lit up. “Thank you so much!”
Rei ended the conversation with, “You’re very welcome” and hung up.
During the wait, I purchased all the other groceries on my shopping list. I carried my shopping bags and was on standby next to the section with stacked-up towers of Nanko plum boxes.
Just like he’d announced, at the ten-minute mark, Rei walked in. Just like me, he thoroughly checked the condition of Nanko plum with his eyes and hands.
He nodded to himself. “For something stocked by the supermarket, it’s pretty good quality. I guess they can’t slack because the elderly around here all have a hobby of making umeboshi. Ones with bruises don’t turn out well when you pickle them, and I can tell they selected these plums carefully.” He sniffed it. “Yeah, it smells good too. It’s just one step short of being fully ripe, but well, that should be fine as long as we store them properly according to our needs. The real question is…are the plums that aren’t on display the same quality? Let’s see…”
Rei gently lifted the top box of plums so that he wouldn’t damage the fruits. Then, one after another, he checked the boxes stacked below. After selecting a few boxes, he sent a sharp gaze in my direction and asked, “How many do you want?”
I mulled over it for a moment. “I would like five boxes if possible. Umeboshi, plum jam, plum syrup… There’re so many things I want to make.”
Hearing that, Rei counted a total of seven boxes from the pile that had passed his inspection—five for me, and two for him. He combined the seven into one stack and carried it effortlessly to the cashier.
They weren’t all that heavy, and I could probably lift the stack as well. But Rei did it so effortlessly that I stared at him in surprise.
He grinned at me. “Being a pâtissier isn’t an easy job, you know. I gotta carry things like sugar, flour, and fruits back and forth. If I don’t have muscles, it’s a matter of life and death! Both my arms and my back will crumble under the literal weight. So this is nothing.” He barked out a hearty laugh.
At the first cashier, he put down my five boxes before he headed to the second cashier with his two. We both finished our payments and headed toward the car park where Rei’s delivery van was parked. Of course, I couldn’t let him do the heavy lifting again, so I carried my boxes together with my shopping bags. It was a challenge, but I managed it somehow while grunting with effort.
We loaded the boxes gently and secured them with a tie-down strap. Then, I arranged the shopping bags so that they wouldn’t get in the way before settling down in the passenger seat.
As Rei climbed into the driver’s seat, he said, “I don’t know for sure, but from what I heard, you can make plums sugary sweet through selective breeding. But no one does that, ’cause the sourness of plums is their identity.” He shrugged. “I mean, there are plenty of naturally sweet fruits out there, so I guess there’s no demand for purely sweet plums.”
“Huuuh. That’s interesting.” I nodded.
Rei began giving me one of his usual trivia sessions as he turned on the engine. He didn’t even pause to take any breaks, and this lecture lasted all the way until I arrived home.