Engage with greengages

There are plums and then there are greengages. Bright green and round with greenish-yellow or golden flesh, they have a beautiful sweet scent when ripe and can be used instead of plums for desserts and preserves.

The blogger Pim Techamuanvivit (chezpim.com) has a recipe for greengage and vanilla jam made with 2lb (about 1kg) greengages, 1lb (about 500g) sugar, 2 vanilla pods and the juice of 1 lemon. When cooked down into compote or jam, the fragrant flavour of the greengages intensifies. There’s also a enough acidity to balance the sweetness and plenty of natural pectin in the skin so there’s no need to add extra.

Another blogger, Princess and the Recipe (princessandrecipe.blogspot.com), has adapted Pim’s recipe to make greengage sorbet, substituting lime for lemon and leaving out the vanilla beans. She cools the stewed greengages before they reach a jammy setting point, pushes them through a sieve to get rid of the skins, pops the sieved liquid in the fridge, then churns it in an ice-cream maker.

Plum season

Plums are in season now and this year's combination of a very cold winter and warm spring means bumper crops. Pershore, in Worcestershire, celebrates with a month-long festival featuring plum sausages and other recipes from the festival's Plum Cook Book (pershoreplumfestival.org.uk)

Rosie Lovell of Brixton's retro-feel deli has a recipe for Plum Clafoutis in her new book Spooning With Rosie (£18.99, Fourth Estate).

Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Stone and chop 450g of Victoria plums into 2.5cm pieces. Butter a baking dish and scatter the fruit into this. Beat two medium free-range eggs in a bowl and add 50g plain flour so that it forms a smooth paste. Gradually add 75ml double cream and 150ml milk and 50g caster sugar so that it becomes a creamy batter. Add 1 tbsp Calvados before pouring the mix over the fruit. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes. Serves 4.