Plum paste recipe

Plum paste is one of the quickest, easiest products to make come harvest season.  You may have seen it near the cheeses at the super market with the cabernet paste, fig paste, etc.  It's a very thick, sweet concoction in a small tub that goes on your cheese board and costs about $5 a pot.  Ludicrous.  You can make enough of the stuff to last a year and many, many cheese boards for just a little bit more than that.

Plum paste is the perfect accompaniment to the bitiest of blues and washed rinds.  This is my own recipe that I put together after checking out what was out there and then having a go myself.  It makes about 2.5 litres of the stuff and I recommend you bottle it in the smallest jars you can find - a couple of tablespoons is the most any cheese board needs.

Ingredients
2kg of plums
2kgs white sugar
3 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice (bottled in a pinch)
1/2 Cup malt vinegar.

Dump your plums in the sink, wash thoroughly and de-stalk.  Cut the seeds out and throw the rest in the food processor along with the vinegar and lemon juice. Do it in two batches - and just blend the life out of it until it's liquid.  Dump it into a saucepan and bring it up to the boil.  Be aware that the mix is quite thick in this state - so keep stirring to avoid burning.  It may also be quite a neon colour;

Once the bubbles start, dump in the sugar.  This will make it lots more liquid and, much darker, thank goodness;

Keep stirring until it boils.  The mixture here is quite thick and needs to be stirred frequently.  But apart from that, just keep boiling until it gets super thick (maybe thirty minutes?) and then start bottling it up into your sterilised jars.  Seal immediately.  The following day when you turn the jar, the paste should not move.  If it does, you're in for a reboil and seal session.  That's all folks.  The paste will last weeks in the fridge once opened but if you don't use a 200ml jar in a month, you're just not eating enough cheese.